


Elliott Witt Fights God (and Other Ragnarok Tales)

by MikeWritesThings



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Norse Religion & Lore, Demigods, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Immortality, Mirage | Elliott Witt & Wraith | Renee Blasey Friendship, Other, Slow Burn, Valhalla, dont worry about the major character death i promise its okay, this is comedy i PROMISE
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21791821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikeWritesThings/pseuds/MikeWritesThings
Summary: Elliott was dying. Like literally dying. On the street, in a puddle of his own blood, to a bunch of hungry wolves. This was extremely embarassing.Man,he thought to himself, as the life faded from his eyes and his remaining limbs went limp,I hope nobody saw that.(Or: Elliott dies, goes to Valhalla, meets Bloodhound, and stops Ragnarok. Not necessarily all in that order.)
Relationships: Bloodhound/Mirage | Elliott Witt, Crypto | Park Tae Joon/Octane | Octavio Silva, Wattson | Natalie Paquette/Wraith | Renee Blasey
Comments: 25
Kudos: 117





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: theres character death and violence but not graphically described, and overall the tone is humorous!
> 
> the darksparks and cryptane should be relatively minor unless something changes! im hoping this will have only 2 or 3 chapters but i left the chapter count "?" because i wasnt too sure!
> 
> anyways.....miragehound time

So Elliott was pretty sure he was dead. Like, blood drained, guts on the floor, not enough limbs on his body for a proper funeral kind of dead. Even worse was the fact that he had died in an extremely embarrassing way, and had thought to himself as he bled out on the street, _man, I hope nobody saw that._

Of course, nothing ever went his way, and he felt a hand grab his arm. Well, not his real arm, because that was lying twelve feet away, half-shredded to pieces–no, he felt someone grab onto his spiritual arm, which definitely existed somehow. He looked up to see a woman surrounded by gold shimmery light, and realized that he was flying into the air. He then noticed he was now riding a winged horse, and started screaming.

“Calm down,” the woman holding onto his arm said over his screams. “You’re just dead.”

Elliott didn’t know about her, but the statement _You’re just dead_ was definitely something to panic about. He thrashed this way and that, trying to get off her flying horse because he wanted to die in peace, damn it, but she suddenly brought her hand down and hit him square between his eyes, and the last thing he saw before his death was her pale blue gaze narrowing in disdain.

Elliott then awoke abruptly in a courtyard.

At least, he was pretty sure that’s what it was called. It might have been a garden. He didn’t know the difference between the two. There were trees surrounding him, and the sky was a pretty blue color, and–holy crap were the leaves on those trees gold? He stared at the glinting trees, taking note of their pure white bark, before realizing he was lying on grass, and should probably get up.

Pulling himself into a sitting position, he winced when he felt something in his neck crack, and brought a hand up to massage the area. He glanced around, taking in the four limestone walls surrounding him. They were vast, maybe twenty feet tall, and looked both foreboding and safe. Kind of like they were trapping him inside the courtyard, but also keeping wolves from breaking through and killing him.

Again.

He then noticed the extremely large mansion in the center of the courtyard.

Elliott didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it as soon as he woke up, but it was like his brain had needed time to process everything else before it could even notice the mansion, and had purposely been blocking it out. He felt an awful sense of vertigo as he looked at the building, looming over him like it had sprung out of the ground. He felt like his depth perception was broken.

The doors were made of dark wood and at least as tall as the limestone walls surrounding him, which felt impossible somehow, and despite their intimidating appearance, the effect was slightly ruined by the carved wolf heads acting as door knockers. They were so realistic that it was comical, because the glinting metal contrasting with the delicately carved fur just...didn’t compute. Metal was obviously not a living thing, but the eyes of the wolves seemed to have life of their own, and just in general...it was hilarious.

Until Elliott remembered he had been killed by wolves like, five minutes ago.

He buried his face in his hands, recalling the images of blue eyes, blue fur, and glistening white teeth. Nothing beats getting disemboweled by an overly large dog.

“Calm down, Elliott,” he whispered to himself, trying not to think too hard about it. “You’re not dead! You’re just dreaming. There’s no way you died! You and your handsome face are right here, intact and–”

“Do you always talk to yourself?” A voice asked, and Elliott shrieked, leaping to his feet and spinning to face his attacker. He was now face-to-face with a short man. At least, he thought it was a man. It was pretty hard to see if the thing standing before him was human, because he had more beard than face. The beard-man adjusted the lapels of his too-clean crisp suit with the letters _HV_ embroidered on the front, and said, “Welcome to your afterlife! Congrats on being dead!”

Elliott felt like fainting despite the energy that had surged through him a moment before. “The afterlife?”

“Yep!”

“...This is a joke, right?” Elliott’s voice cracked as he glanced around, looking for any hidden cameras amongst the gold leaves. “Like, are you joking? Am I being filmed right now?”

“Nope,” the beard-man said rather calmly. He pulled a gold pocket watch from the front of his suit and gave it a cursory look before stuffing it back inside. “Just in time for check-in! Wraith is punctual, as usual.”

“Who?” Elliott asked, knees going weak as he tried to make sense of everything going on right now: mainly, why was he alive, who was Wraith, and how was this beard-man speaking through all that hair.

“All your questions will be answered as soon as you get your room. I’m Hunding, by the way. At your service.” The beard-man turned and hobbled towards the front doors, and Elliott noticed the extremely large battle-axe strapped to his back. He had half a mind to take it and give Hunding a much-needed haircut, but decided not to push his luck so soon after dying a horrible, awful, painful death.

The inside of the building was much larger than the outside suggested. Elliott felt like his depth perception was getting messed with again, and pressed the heels of his palms to his eyelids, taking a deep, shuddering breath to cool his nausea. Okay. So. He was alive and this building was bigger on the inside. He’d seen _Doctor Who_ before. He could manage a little crazy.

It was cool inside, everything being paneled with wood and even with what might have been gold. There were rafters on the ceiling made of multitudes of criss-crossed spears, and there were a _lot_ of animal hides. On the floor, on the walls, on chairs, of pretty much every animal he could think of. Lions. Elephants. Polar bears. Bobcats. He’d never been vegan at any point in his life, but the amount of furs lining the space were seriously making him consider it. He was pretty sure he had walked into the aftermath of Noah’s Ark, not helped by the fact that, strangely enough, the inside of this building was shaped like the upside down hull of a Viking ship.

“Don’t worry,” Hunding said, as if reading his mind and seeing all his questions about Viking architecture. “All the above floors have a normal, boring rectangular shape, unless requested by an einherji.”

“Gesundheit,” Elliott said, because even if he was dead, he had his manners.

“No, kid,” Hunding said, and Elliott finally realized he _did_ have a mouth under his wild tangles of hair. “Einherji is a word. It’s what you are.”

Elliott didn’t know what to do with this information, and his brain was already struggling with the situation. _Default to comedy._

“Does that mean ‘incredibly handsome man’?”

“It means a dead warrior, specifically a dead warrior of Valhalla.” Hunding tapped a service bell that resided on the counter of a receptionist’s desk that Elliott hadn’t even noticed before, but not because of any sort of weird magic this place seemed to have–this time, he just simply hadn’t been paying attention.

A man taller than Hunding, but with just as much beard, emerged from a back office type area, holding a cup with cat paws on it and looking disgruntled.

“Check-in’s almost over,” he said, and Hunding bristled.

“This is one of Wraith’s heroes. We have to get him in immediately.”

“Yes, yes, I knew he was on his way,” Helgi sighed, setting his cup down on the counter. Elliott glanced at it, having expected to see coffee, and instead saw a blood-red liquid that he _hoped_ was wine. And if it wasn’t....well. Maybe these were vampire Vikings.

“Let’s see...Elliott Witt, died February sixteenth, dismemberment and disembowelment,” Helgi read off a book with several different names inside, each name done in different handwriting. His name was written in precise lines that looked almost like print. “Yep, you’re definitely supposed to be here. Ugh, I hate children of Loki.”

Elliott stiffened at that name. He hadn’t heard it in a while, and unlike most people, it did not bring forth the image of dashing Tom Hiddleston, but rather, a man with a face so screwed up and scarred he wondered how he had managed to produce a man as good looking as Elliott himself. Not that he had technically contributed to Elliott’s birth. Had he? The Loki lore confused him too much.

“I assume you have some vague idea of what’s going on?” Helgi asked, having noticed Elliott’s reaction.

“I just know my dad was a god, I guess,” Elliott said, trying to play it cool. Despite his words, his mother’s voice spoke in his head: _Never trust your father, Ell. He’s a despicable man. You’re better than him. You’ll understand when you die._ To other people, that might have sounded ominous, but he’d merely responded with _Thanks mom! I wish you had told me this before so I could figure out why I kept randomly shapeshifting into a meerkat whenever I got nervous!_

“Your father was Loki, and since you died in combat, you qualify for Valhalla.” Helgi accidentally knocked over his mug of blood-red stuff, and gave a groan. “Hunding, clean this up. Anyways, here’s your key. You live on floor sixty-nine with your age group.”

Elliott stared at the key being offered to him, feeling like the punchline to this long, very not funny joke had finally arrived.

“Did. Did you say floor sixty-nine?”

“Yes.” Helgi wiggled the key a little. “So are you gonna take it or..?”

“Sixty-nine.”

Helgi looked over at Hunding, who shrugged, looking lost. “Did you hit your head when you died?”

“This is a j-j-joke, right?” Elliott stuttered, on the verge of a breakdown. “This isn’t real. This is definitely a joke. I am not dead and I am n-n-not going to live on floor sixty-nine of some weird Nordic afterlife.”

“Nope. Not a joke.” Hunding finished cleaning and clapped a hand on Elliott’s shoulder, giving him what might have been a smile, but it was hard to tell with the beard. Elliott suddenly realized the suit he was wearing was a bellhop uniform. “Welcome to Hotel Valhalla. Enjoy Ragnarok!”

Elliott definitely saw more of the Viking influence as he boarded the elevator, taking note of the gold shields that lined the walls, the animal furs and spears. Carved decorative horns were placed strategically here and there, as if to give the area a hunting lodge sort of vibe. The elevator doors were even more spears, and he felt like fainting when they closed in front of him.

“Floors sixty to one hundred and fifteen are for adults aged twenty to thirty,” Hunding said as Norwegian Frank Sinatra played over the elevator speakers. “Kids get too annoyed by the old folk and the old folk try to kill the kids too much, so we have everyone separated by age. And nobody ages in Valhalla, so you’re stuck here for the rest of your afterlife. Until you die for real in Ragnarok.”

“You keep saying that word,” Elliott said, trying to appear casually confident, but he was pretty sure he was about to pee himself. “But I don’t know what that means.”

Hunding shrugged. “End of the Nine Worlds, basically. The einherjar in Valhalla train every day, awaiting our final deaths. We’ll defend Asgard with the gods, and die painfully.”

“Can we opt out of Ragnarok?” Elliott asked as they passed floor forty.

“‘Fraid not,” Hunding replied, running his thumb along the sharpened edge of his battle-axe. “We’re all destined to die in Ragnarok. You included.”

Elliott was pretty sure he was going to puke his newly-reformed guts out. He didn’t sign up for this. He just wanted to live his life, become famous, die surrounded by women in a hot tub and then just cease to exist. _That_ was his ideal world. 

The real world was a cruel joke. He died on the street with a mirror in hand, days after a breakup and also probably with greasy hair. He had become dog chow. What was so heroic and godly about that? Why did he have to be here?

Norwegian Frank Sinatra came to a stop as the elevator doors opened at floor sixty-nine, and they both stepped out into a hallway so large Elliott nearly jumped back into the elevator to escape. The place seemed to be a mile long, no discernable end, with doors on the walls spaced so far apart he wondered if the occupants had the luxury of never having to make noise complaints about the other inhabitants. There were even more rafter-spears, animal skins, and gold shields on the walls. The hallway was certainly long, but its width was also no joke–he was pretty sure he could fit his family’s whole house inside this hallway comfortably.

The place was so formal, so unreal, so Nordic that his knees buckled a little at the first evidence of non-Viking life: there was a very large sign displaying FLOOR 69, and scratched under the gold-embossed writing was the word _‘NICE.’_

Hunding frowned at the letters, which Elliott could tell because his beard moved in a funny way, like a hedgehog curling up. “I keep telling Silva not to do that.”

“There’s other people here?” Elliott asked, because he hadn’t really seen anybody and was starting to think he would be spending his entire afterlife just as alone as he spent his mortal life.

“Your nearest hallmates are Octavio Silva, Ajay Che, and Bloodhound,” Hunding said, and the abrupt way he said the last name made Elliott give out an involuntary nervous giggle. “Here’s your room. Only your key can unlock it.”

Elliott held out his hand to take the key, but the thing placed into his palm was certainly not a key. He looked down at it, confused, and saw a little rock with markings engraved onto it. He had no idea what it meant, but he was also pretty sure he had _just_ seen Hunding use a key on the very obvious keyhole in his door.

“It’s a runestone,” Hunding said, sensing Elliott’s numerous questions. “Your puny mind is still trying to see past the glamor that we use on mortals to make sure they don’t see frost giants crapping all over Boston. Anyways, enjoy your afterlife.”

He turned on his heel and shuffled away, and Elliott blinked out of his stupor just in time to ask, “Wait, I’m in Boston? I’m spending my afterlife in _Boston?_ ”

The elevator doors closed, and he didn’t get an answer, though he swore he saw Hunding roll his eyes.

Elliott decided that throwing up in his room would be much cooler than throwing up out in the hallway, so he pushed his door open, ready to scream into the stark white pillows provided for him, but froze as soon as he saw what actually awaited him.

The room was so big that for a moment he thought he _must_ be sharing it with someone, but no one else was inside. His room was divided into four smaller sections, each following a chocolatey brown color scheme with splashes of gold. One held a large bed with nearly as large plush pillows and a soft comforter that looked exactly like the one he and his mother used to cuddle under during movie night. Another section was a bathroom with so many hair products and combs in the vanity cabinet he was sure that if he hadn’t been on the verge of passing out, he would have wept in joy. A living room and kitchen area looked exactly the way his mother used to decorate it: vinyl records on the wall, countless movies they didn’t even watch on the shelves, and magazines everywhere.

The couch seemed to have been lifted straight from his memories, minus all the juice stains. When he pressed his hand against it, it felt exactly the same, and he was reminded of the many movie nights he and his brothers spent on it.

“Holy crap,” he said out loud, and his voice cracked. A lot. “It’s…”

“ _Perfecto,_ right?”

Elliott gave a perfectly manly screech and spun around, knees knocking into the couch and causing him to fall backwards over its cushions. He struggled to escape the plush confines, and finally managed to roll over onto the hardwood floor, scattering the cushions and throw pillows everywhere. Getting to his feet, he saw two kids standing in the doorway, both with matching expressions of humor.

They were both about the same height and age, the boy being slightly taller. He had dyed hair swept back in a careless manner to display the numerous piercings in his ears and face, his natural hair being black, judging by the shaved sides, but the top a bright green. He had slit eyebrows and if it weren’t for the fact that Elliott knew the people in this hall were between the ages of twenty and thirty, he would have pegged him for a high schooler. His skin was olive-colored and it was hard for Elliott to figure out his race.

The girl’s appearance was somehow more shocking. She was black, with bright pink hair tied into buns at the top of her head and a tattoo on her left shoulder. She had on pretty makeup and had an abundance of freckles that made her look as young as the guy by her side. And Elliott didn’t mean for this to sound wrong, but whenever he pictured Vikings, he thought of white-as-hell men in metal bras and bushy beards. Seeing two Not-White™ people in front of him somehow made him even more confused.

Though he wasn’t even white himself, so he wondered why he even assumed there wouldn’t be any Not-White™ people here. Were their dads gods too? Did Valhalla just choose people randomly? Was this hall specifically for children of Loki? Because the dude seemed pretty mischievous, and was probably the culprit of the word _'NICE'_ carved into the floor sign.

And even ignoring the color of their skin, they looked nothing like Vikings. The tattoos, piercings, and slit eyebrows, were _not_ what Elliott had been expecting from dead warriors in a Nordic afterlife. He felt somewhat relieved by the fact that he wouldn’t be surrounded by Leif Erikson lookalikes, but also, these kids looked way too young to be dead. He felt bad. And hopelessly lost on what the rules of this place were.

“Take a picture, it lasts longer,” the girl said, and Elliott tried to place her accent. Jamaican, maybe. “Thought we would check out the new guy. Welcome to floor sixty-nine.”

The dude sniggered, and she swatted at him. “It’s not funny anymore, Tavi. That joke is getting old.”

“It will _forever_ be funny. We died and got sent to floor sixty-nine! How is that _not_ funny to you?” ‘Tavi’ laughed, crossing his arms, and Elliott noticed that he too had a tattoo. “All those old farts on floor four-twenty probably don’t even appreciate it!”

“There’s a floor four-twenty?” Elliott asked, now very glad the floor of his room was covered in pillows just in case he started fainting for real.

“This place has five hundred and forty total floors,” the girl said, giving him a weird look. “So yeah. Probably. Didn't they tell you?"

“Well, we wanted to see you, because it’s almost lunch time,” ‘Tavi’ said before he could answer, waving around a sword Elliott definitely had not noticed before. “Put on your armor, amigo. Today’s tacos to the death.”

Elliott stared, not sure if he had heard correctly. “What.”

“Lunch is done to the death,” the girl explained with a shrug. “If you want to eat, you have to be prepared to die. Today’s menu is tacos.”

When Elliott didn’t move, she said, “Pretty much everything is done to the death. If you want, we’re doing Dance Dance Revolution to the death later.”

And Elliott was pretty sure, judging by his blackening vision and the fact that the kids both reached out for him at the same time, that he had just fainted.

When he next awoke, he was staring into the face of the woman who had yanked his soul from his body. He was sure it was the same face–the same piercing on her nose, the same greasy hair and large scarf around her neck.

“You,” he said, trying to sound accusing, but his throat was dry so it came out like a wheeze.

“Me,” she said, unamused, and grabbed his wrist before yanking him to his feet. Elliott would like to think that he recovered gracefully, looking as perfect as one could, but he tripped over his own feet before his back had even fully straightened and the lady had to right him. 

“So. Uh. You killed me, I’m pretty sure,” Elliott said, flipping his hair out of his face in an attempt to appear cool.

“I saved your soul,” she corrected, and man, her milky blue gaze was extremely unnerving. “I’m your Valkyrie, and I saved your afterlife.”

Not _life._ Afterlife. What good was that?

“A Valkawhat,” Elliott said, because he was a very intelligent and educated individual.

“We work for Odin,” the woman said, looking down at her hands. There was a scar on her earlobe, recent, that Elliott was curious about. “And we bring the slain to Valhalla to await Ragnarok.”

Elliott stared at her, trying to comprehend her words. So. Because she worked for this Odin guy, she had decided it was cool to take his soul and bring it to this weird Nordic afterlife? _He_ had to now live his (after)life as some sort of Viking warrior because _she_ had decided _Hey, that Elliott Witt guy sure has Viking potential! Look at that beard!_

“It’s your fault I’m here?” He asked, trying to sound Very Polite, but failing.

“I didn’t _choose_ you,” she said coolly, grabbing at his forearm and gripping it tightly. He had just got that arm back after having it ripped off, and he could already feel her fingers forming bruises on his new skin. “I’m...different. Special. I have an instinct that tells me what people I carry over. A little voice. And Odin trusts this voice.”

Scary Valkyrie Lady had a little voice in her head that told her Elliott was a warrior? Elliott would like to convene with this voice, and tell it to go fuck itself.

“And there’s no going back, anyway,” she said, yanking her hand away from him. “You’re stuck here, whether I made a mistake or not. My name is Wraith, and it’s almost dinner time. Let’s go.”

Elliott felt fear pool in his stomach. He followed after Wraith, noting her black hair pulled into a loose bun and her tiny stature.

“So, uh, it’s not d-d-dinner to the death, is it? The kids from earlier said today was tacos to the death, but–”

“They were joking with you,” Wraith said, cutting him off as she pressed a button for the elevator. “Today’s meatloaf to the death.”

“Oh,” Elliott said. That was somehow worse. Who the fuck wants to eat _meatloaf_ in their afterlife?

Wraith gave him a wry twist of her mouth that might have been an attempt at a smile.

"Uh, why are you looking at me like that?” He asked, suddenly nervous.

“Because your death is going to be broadcasted,” she said, and the spear gates closed on them. “And I can’t wait to see everyone’s faces.”

The walk to the dining hall was filled with many more things Elliott wished weren’t real. Namely the wolves running everywhere and the ravens flying overhead. They seemed to be house-trained wolves and ravens, so there wasn’t any sort of mess, but they still made him uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as witnessing a young girl literally stab another to death. He gasped as she fell to the ground, choking on her own blood, and grasped Wraith’s shoulder.

“Shouldn’t we do something?” He asked, staring in horror as the life faded before her eyes. “She’s dying!”

“She’s fine,” Wraith said, nudging the girl’s hand, which was doing an ‘okay’ sign. 

“Damn,” the murderer said, looking at the girl’s fingers. “She got me.”

“She’ll be fine after dinner. You can’t die in Valhalla.” Wraith shook his hand off her shoulder and lead him down another hallway, while he tried not to stare at a wolf dragging the dead girl’s body away. He looked ahead as Wraith made twists and turns, mapping their progress mentally. He was having trouble keeping up, which was weird, because he had always had a good sense of direction despite his (many) faults. He eyed the various weapons that hung decoratively, and wondered if Matthew would like any of them.

 _Stupid,_ he winced to himself as that name brought painful memories. _Don’t think of them right now..._

But....

What if..?

“This is the Feast Hall of the Slain,” Wraith said, pushing open a large set of wood doors. The Feast Hall of the Slain was significantly larger than floor sixty-nine, and that was saying something. There were about five hundred more doors lining the rows and rows of the hall, and the place resembled an amphitheater, but instead of bleachers there were curved dinner tables filled with chattering einherjar. So many einherjar that he struggled to comprehend the sheer _number_ of people who had managed to qualify for Valhalla. Many of the einherjar wore armor, but some wore regular clothing like jeans and flannel, and even more strangely, some wore fluffy green bathrobes while their weapons were strapped to their backs. It said _I could kill you right now, but I'm totally just chillaxing._

Smack dab in the middle of the hall was a tree so large Elliott hadn’t even realized it was a tree until Wraith said, “And that’s the World Tree. Yggdrasil.”

“What.”

“Just call it the World Tree. It connects all Nine Worlds. Well, it’s not _really_ the World Tree. But this represents it.”

“Thanks, that explains everything. Nine Worlds,” Elliott said, recalling something his mother had once told him. She’d explained to him the concept of the Nine Worlds, how they were more like realms than actual planets, but he’d been ten at the time and brushed it off. Now he was missing her Evelyn Witt way of explaining things as he tried to wrap his mind around nine different planes of existence. “That’s a lot of worlds. How many pork chops you think are in them total?”

“You’re an idiot,” Wraith said without much inflection. “But if you want pork chops for dinner, I can make that happen.”

Elliott perked up a little bit at that. For the first time since getting disemboweled and waking up in a Scandinavian version of Hotel Transylvania, he felt that maybe this afterlife gig couldn’t be _so_ bad if there were pork chops here. He suddenly noticed the fact that water was cascading down the tree, which was hard to notice at first due to its sheer size, and that there were definitely animals hopping around in the tree, which couldn’t be very safe, or sanitary.

Even stranger were the women flying around the tree, holding pitchers up and collecting the water, most donning cloaks or headscarves. He noted that they were all the same color green as Wraith's scarf.

“Why is your tree crying?” He asked as Wraith lead him down the row of tables.

“We drink that,” she said, and ignored his disgusted little noise of shock. “The tree isn’t crying. It’s the water from a stag. It gets turned into mead. And that big thing over there is what we eat.”

She pointed at an extremely large _thing_ roasting over an open fire. More women (he assumed by this point that they were Valkyries) were tending to the thing, which was probably once the body of an otherworldly animal, but its meat was now being smoked for some good old-fashioned Valhalla barbecue. 

"Uh. What is that."

"It's whatever you want it to be. Chicken. Tofu. Pork."

Elliott suddenly wasn’t too keen on the idea of Valhalla pork chops.

“This is where you sit,” Wraith said, suddenly forcing him into a chair. “Say hello to Octavio Silva and Ajay Che.”

“Hola,” Octavio Silva said around a mouthful of Unidentifiable Animal. His sword was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't rule out the possibility of him dying soon. “Glad you’re awake. Thought you died.”

“I _said_ he had a pulse,” Ajay Che mumbled. “But you never listen to me.”

“Hey, once, you said Makoa Gibraltar was dead, and guess what, Ajay. He wasn’t. He wasn’t fucking dead.”

“Can you get over that already?”

“He _cut my arms off!_ ”

Elliott rubbed at his right arm, currently sensitive to the idea of arms being cut off. Wraith noticed and hid a smirk behind her scarf, which he did not appreciate. Elliott liked to put on an air of confidence and bravado: it was how he got through his day-to-day life, dealing with the loss of his brothers and his missing mother, but here in Valhalla, he felt so out of his zone that it just wasn’t feasibly possible for him to pretend to understand anything. He was confused, and had questions. _Many_ questions.

“Did you choose them too?” Elliott asked, trying to make conversation, and when Wraith shot him a look he backed down. “Okay, okay just asking.”

“I did,” she said after a beat, and pulled something from her scarf. After seeing spears, swords, and golden shields all day, her kunai came as an underwhelming surprise. “Everyone on floor sixty-nine, I chose. And like I said, Odin trusts my judgement. You all deserve to be here.”

“Right,” Elliott said. “Uh, who’s Odin?”

“I swear you newbies get dumber every time,” Octavio snorted, waving his fork around carelessly. “ _‘Who’s Odin.’_ Seriously. Did you ever watch _Thor?_ ”

“You say that like we aren’t newbies ourselves,” Ajay said before Elliott could even answer. She gave Elliott a smile, though there was definitely a spark in her eyes that told him that despite her kindness, she was perfectly capable of mocking him, and possibly killing him. “We only got here two months ago.”

Elliott raised an eyebrow. “Both of you came at the same time?”

“We both died at the same time, in the same fight,” Octavio said. “Heroic stuff, blah blah. Saved some kids from a bus bombing. Got hit in the head with rubble and died on impact, but I had a knife because I was cutting someone out of their seatbelt, so it counted. Ajay died right after me, was doing the same thing I was, but got caught in the blast.”

“Don’t worry about all that heroic nonsense they’re gonna tell you,” Ajay said, and smiled in thanks as a passing Valkyrie refilled her golden cup with goat mead. “We’re all here because we’re meant to be.”

Elliott suddenly felt a little better about the way he died. He had been imagining that everyone here died in like, a war or something, and was glad to find that they were only _slightly_ less heroic than that. Made the gap between he and the rest seem smaller.

He then noticed a person sitting towards the end of the table. He hadn’t realized they were there at first because their head was bent, feeding a raven delicate portions of Unidentifiable Animal, but they then straightened up, giving him a better look of their strange mask. They were fully clothed, covered from head to toe in gear, and it made their gender indiscernible. They noticed him staring and when they spoke, even that was filtered so it was hard to tell what they were.

“Evening, felagí fighter,” they said, strangely formal despite their wild appearance. They had a distinct accent that sounded Germanic, though was probably Swedish or something, considering the fact that they were in Valhalla. Then again, Ajay was Jamaiacan. “I look forward to seeing your honorable deeds.”

“That’s Bloodhound,” Wraith said, seeing the look on Elliott’s face. She flipped her kunai between her fingers a couple of times, pale eyes gazing at nothing as she said, “And they deserve to be here as much as you.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he said defensively.

“They use they and them as their pronouns,” was all she said in response. “Remember that.”

Elliott remembered Nathan, and felt a pang in his chest. “Alright.”

Her eyes flashed a little dangerously as she tucked the kunai back into her scarf. “I mean it.”

“I get it!” He said, just in case she tried to kill him. “One of my brothers was...is...he...”

Speaking suddenly became difficult, so he grabbed a goblet of goat mead and downed half of it all in one gulp, and...hey, this actually wasn’t so bad. He eyed Bloodhound out of the corner of his eye and saw that they had returned to the task of feeding their bird, occasionally reaching out a hand carefully to stroke at its head. He wondered what they had done to get here, and why Wraith got so defensive of them.

Helgi stood up from a large table that Wraith described as the thane’s table, where all the important dead people sat, which, great, even in his afterlife there was a hierarchy. They said something-or-other about Odin, death and honor, and then Valkyrie Vision. Elliott had no idea what that last thing was, but guessed he should probably be worried about it, because a bright white light was suddenly shining directly where he sat.

“We only have two honorable deaths today!” Helgi shouted, spreading his arms widely. Half of his beard was trailing across his plate of Unidentifiable Animal. “Give it up for Elliott Witt, son of Loki, and Taejoon Park, son of...Jiyeon!”

The other guy clearly didn’t have a godly parent, and Elliott wondered if there were only two criteria for getting into Valhalla: being a demigod or dying in combat. Or maybe you just had to die in combat, and being a demigod was an extra bonus. He was pretty sure his mom had told him there were multiple realms for the dead, but too many of them had ended in _-heim_ and it was hard for his tiny, ten year old little brain to remember them all.

A very large projector screen started descending upon the Feast Hall of the Slain, ruining the whole rustic Nordic vibe with technology. The thing was so large you could cover the entire of Times Square with it and still have a little wiggle room. Several of the Valkyries were pulling strings, obviously moving it downwards, and he was in awe of their strength. Then he remembered what Wraith had said earlier.

“Wait,” he said, just a bit panicked. “Are w-w-w-e going to watch me die on that screen?”

“Yeah,” she said, though her amusement from earlier had been replaced by something much more melancholy. Sad, almost. "You're going second. Let's see how you compare."

Elliott decided he did not like Wraith, and he certainly did not like whatever Valkyrie Vision was.

Valkyrie Vision, it turned out, was a camera that Valkyries clipped onto themselves to film the heroic deeds of the slain so the einherjar could more accurately judge the magnitude of one’s actions. Taejoon Park did not have a godly parent, but he most certainly was a hero. Elliott watched him kick out of the ropes that bound his wrists and ankles together, moving to free the other captives silently. He wore a large jacket with a padded green inside that he used to suffocate a guard, throwing it over their head and shoving them down while they struggled to sound an alarm.

Their limbs eventually fell limp, and Taejoon picked his jacket back up, slinging it over his shoulder. He carefully removed the gun strapped to the guard’s thigh, and the crowd of einherjar watching gave out a little appreciative _‘oooh’_ like it was an exciting film they were watching, and not the last moments of someone’s life. Taejoon proceeded to kill two more guards, freeing more prisoners, before kicking open the back of the truck they were in, freeing the other people trapped inside.

He was taking aim at a distant truck, probably another one full of captives, when the guard everyone thought he suffocated got to their feet unsteadily behind him. A girl near Elliott shrieked “look out!”, but it was no use. Taejoon Park fell dead as the guard shot him with a gun that had been hidden in their sock.

The screen dimmed, and everyone gave a round of polite applause. When the noise died down, Helgi said, “Extremely heroic, Mr. Park. You’ll be happy to know that the rest of the captives were able to escape thanks to your sacrifice, and that Valhalla welcomes you. We will now read your runes!”

Elliott strained to see what was happening, but so did everyone else in the hall, and he couldn’t see over so many heads at once. A woman’s voice said, “Taejoon Park shows great promise as a warrior of Valhalla. He will bring honor to the occupants of floor one hundred fifty four. I foresee a future of technological advancements made by him. He will also decapitate someone tomorrow.”

Everybody had been _‘oohing’_ and _‘aahhing’_ at that point, but broke into wild applause at that last bit. Elliott saw Taejoon Park bury his face into his hands, looking like he would rather not be there, in stark contrast to the smug and beaming Valkyrie who had chosen him. Elliott could relate, and he felt bad for the guy, right until Helgi said, “And now, Elliott Witt’s turn! Let’s see your honorable death!”

* * *

Elliott knew he was a demigod before he had died. His mother had been warning him all his life about his father Loki, telling him not to fall too far into his father’s grasp should he ever run into him. He’d never had any trouble believing her: after all, he had been nervously shapeshifting into a meerkat ever since he was seven. Apparently children of Loki inherited his shapeshifting powers, but Elliott had never been very good at controlling his. He had at least stopped turning into a meerkat unless he was _super_ stressed, but he had never figured out how to turn into other animals, so he was pretty useless when it came to that.

Shapeshifting probably would have been real handy when it came to preventing his death.

He had been walking down a dimly lit street, dragging his feet and feeling like utter shit. He had been dumped two days ago on Valentine’s Day, which, what a day, huh. He wasn’t over it, and this was shown clearly in his reflection–he had been holding a golden mirror his mother had gifted him before she disappeared. His eyes were red and puffy. His face was swollen. His hair was greasy and his beard was untrimmed. If Elliott from the past were looking at him right now, he’d scream. But he wasn’t Elliott From The Past. He was Elliott Right Now, heartbroken and depressed.

Truth was, he’d told his most recent girlfriend about his demigod status. Things had been getting serious, and he’d decided, _hey, if I’m going to spend the rest of my life with this chick, better tell her I can do magic and occasionally get chased by wolves._ But she had called him crazy, poured a shot of tequila over his head, and dumped him. Maybe doing it at the bar hadn’t been a good idea, but he’d wanted the comfort of a familiar place should it all go downhill. And boy, did it go downhill.

But that was neither here nor there. His death took place in a dimly lit alley, by himself, staring at his reflection in the mirror as he stumbled a little drunkenly all over the place. Man, if only Chris could see him now...he’d make fun of him and...

 _Don’t think about them,_ his brain said. _You’ll make things worse._

“Shut up, brain,” he slurred out loud, and ran right into a telephone pole. He then heard a weird, low snarling somewhere to the right, and turned his head, looking for the source of the sound. It was easy to spot: a wolf so big it belonged in the Guiness World Records of _World’s Largest Fucking Wolf Ever,_ looming over a homeless woman and baring its teeth. She must have been a demigod too, and the wolf had smelled their combined despair. Living out in the cold, miserable and hungry, added to his post-breakup moping, had mixed together into delicious mortal soup for wolves to devour. _Smells like human over there! Want a bite to eat?_

Elliott was drunk. He was sad. He had been crying all day inside his bathtub like a champ, had eaten nothing but pork chops for the past two days, and hadn’t actually showered since February thirteenth. So Elliott, in all his three day grunge, two day breakup glory, shouted a very intelligent “leave her alone!” before chucking his handheld mirror at the wolf. The mirror bounced harmlessly against the wolf’s flank before falling to the ground, the glass shattering into a million powdery pieces. The woman looked up at him as if to say _are you an idiot?,_ but the wolf turned away from her, it’s attention successfully distracted.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” Elliott said, hands on his hips. He didn’t know if he was feeling brave at the moment, or if the breakup feelings and drunkenness had temporarily muted all feelings of fear. He just knew that he did not want to see someone get eaten by a wolf today. Any day for that matter, but especially not today. 

The wolf had blazing blue eyes and great shaggy fur that was speckled with neon ice. It was otherworldly and terrifying, but Elliott didn’t back down when it bared its gleaming pearly whites. He had one thing this wolf didn’t:

Bamboozles.

Elliott Witt had never managed the art of shapeshifting. He knew it was something he could do, and he’d done it before, though nobody ever seemed to notice. He’d shrunk into a meerkat on the playground several times, and the older kids always rolled their eyes and said, “He’s crying again”, so maybe they just saw him curling up into a ball. Meerkats aren’t effective deadly fighting machines, so shapeshifting wouldn’t do him any good here. It wouldn't do him good _anywhere._ What was the point of a child of Loki if you couldn't use one of his most important abilities?

Well, Elliott had always thought to himself, it was a good thing he had inherited Loki’s skill at illusions.

Two Elliotts stood before the wolf now, matching expressions of drunk defiance. The wolf’s head swaggered this way and that, trying to figure out which was the real one, before locking eyes with the Elliott on the right, who so happened to be the real Elliott. Curse canines and their superb sense of smell. He barely had time to dodge the snarling jowls of the animal, rolling to the ground and yelling at the woman, “Run, before it gets you!”

She got to her feet and bolted, not looking back once. The wolf no longer seemed interested in her now that it had a tasty child of Loki in its hands (er, paws). And maybe Elliott would have been flattered if he wasn’t about to die, but as the situation stood, he did not think he would taste good today. Or any other day. But especially not today.

He rolled out of the way of the wolf’s teeth, but its claws tore into his side and ripped his shirt apart, and he gave a wail. Fuck, that hurt, but it was okay! He had run from wolves before! He didn’t have these scars on his face for nothing!

Elliott kicked the wolf away and scrambled to his feet, but the amount of blood gushing from the wound wasn’t good. His vision had black spots and he took two steps before faceplanting right into the ground. The wolf attacked again, this time managing to get a good grip on his forearm and biting, biting, biting and tugging and–

Elliott gave a scream as his arm was ripped apart, any drunk haziness being sapped away from him in an instant. He now very much felt fear, and pain, and like he was going to die. The wolf discarded his arm, like it didn’t taste that good, and he wanted to cry out _the rest of me probably doesn’t taste so good either,_ but it was already shredding at his soft belly.

He did the only thing he could think of, shaking fingers fumbling for the broken mirror shards on the ground, but there was so much blood that they slipped through his fingers before he could get a proper grip on them. There were more howls in the distance, and he knew that even more wolves were on their way. So he grabbed onto the handle of his mirror, and whacked the wolf on its head with it.

It paused in its dismemberment of Elliott, giving him a shocked look, before continuing its attack with vigor as Elliott screamed, hitting it again and again with his mirror. Fuck, he wasn’t supposed to die like this! He’d promised, he’d promised his mom that he would live until at _least_ age sixty and have kids and grandkids and dogs and–

He saw another wolf approaching, drooling hungrily at the minced Elliott meat, and he knew that there was no way he was going to survive. He was dead for sure.

As the life faded from him, his weak hand dropped to the ground, fingers still clutched tightly around his mirror, and he thought to himself, _man, I hope nobody saw that._

And then Wraith had to go and ruin everything.

* * *

The Feast Hall of the Slain was silent. Nobody was laughing, or smiling, or clapping. They were all staring at him, and also at Wraith, who in turn was staring at the floor.

Finally, Bloodhound said, “You died with honor,” and gave him a soldier's salute.

That broke the silence. Several people muttered “of course the _argr_ thinks that”, and several others whispered “what was Wraith _thinking?_ ”

One, Elliott did not know what _argr_ meant, and two, what _was_ she thinking?

Finally, Wraith stood up, and the hall fell silent.

“Honorable dead,” she said, voice quiet yet commanding. “You have all trusted my judgement before. This man saved the life of a fellow demigod. He went against wolves, showed potential for tactical cunning, and died with a weapon in hand. He qualifies for Valhalla.”

“Er,” Helgi said, and her blue eyes flashed towards him, threatening. “You are our most profitable Valkyrie, that is true. You've brought us more einherjar in two months than some have in years....but Elliott Witt and your...er...most recent charge–”

“We have already cleared the issue of Bloodhound,” Wraith said coolly and clearly. “Not that there was _any_ issue to begin with.”

"Can the mirror even qualify as a weapon?" One of the thanes stage-whispered. Elliott saw Wraith clench her fists, and wondered where all this quiet, controlled rage was coming from.

"I have a gift none of you posses, and Odin values my judgement," she said, and despite her tiny size, Elliott was kind of scared of her. "May I remind you all that Odin appointed _me_ personally?'

“Right. Well. Uhh," Helgi blinked, before looking to the very large, unoccupied chair beside him. "Perhaps the Allfather would like to step in?”

Nothing happened. Helgi cleared his throat awkwardly. “Very well. Let’s read Elliott Witt’s runes.”

Elliott really wished he could see what was happening right now, and also wished he could phase out of existence. This was embarrassing. After looking at Taejoon Park’s much cooler, much more heroic death, he felt like a joke. His whole life was a joke, and Valhalla was one big punchline. This feeling only worsened when that same woman’s voice said,

“Elliott Witt, child of Loki, will gain a reputation amongst the halls of Valhalla. He will deceive many, and fool himself most of all. And tomorrow he shall be decapitated.”

The mood in the hall suddenly shifted. Everyone had been underwhelmed only moments before, but with that second line of the rune reading, the rest of the einherjar regarded him with distrust, and Elliott was reminded once again that being a child of Loki was probably not a good thing. And also, it definitely sounded like Taejoon Park was going to decapitate him sometime soon, which symbolized pretty much everything that had gone down tonight.

The einherjar soon dispersed, heading back to their own floors. Elliott followed Octavio Silva, staring at the ground, and only just now noticing that the other’s legs were metal. He wondered why he hadn’t been reborn with all his limbs if Elliott had been reborn with all his guts. He wished he hadn’t been reborn at all. He wished Wraith had left him to rot, or at least stepped in to help him while he was getting turned into kibble.

He looked up briefly to see if she was still by his side, but she was flying above him, conversing with a much larger woman with curly hair and a severe face. Deciding not to bother them lest the larger woman impale him with her spear, he ducked his head down and avoided the gaze of everyone in the hall.

Elliott liked attention. He’d always been good at party tricks, because ironically enough, Loki’s illusions were the only things mortals could see. He was used to bending reality just a little bit enough to be entertaining, good at tricking the eye. He enjoyed the gasps, the oohs and ahhs, the stares. But today the attention felt negative, oppressive, and he wanted to do nothing more but curl up on top of his bed and wait for Ragnarok to hit.

On floor sixty-nine Ajay and Octavio bade him a good night. Unlike the others, they didn’t seem so distrustful, but that was probably because they had seen him faint after being told about tacos to the death. Bloodhound moved swiftly down to their own room, and he looked at their retreating back, a million questions dancing at the tip of his tongue. He wanted to ask what they had done, why everyone regarded them the same way they now regarded Elliott, but before he could say anything, they turned their head towards him and said,

“Do not let them get to you. You have a warrior inside you. We all do, and together, we will honor the Allfather.”

They made a weird cooing noise, and a raven swooped down from the rafters and perched on their shoulder, before they shut the door behind them.

Elliott stared at the place they had been standing, eyes wide, before unlocking his door with his runestone. He didn’t feel like changing his clothes, and didn’t want to look at his body, afraid he would see the scars of where his guts had magically been returned to his insides. He collapsed onto his bed, feeling even worse than death, and fought back the tears burning in his eyes.

Great. Just great. He’d broken his promise to his mom, died to some wolves, and was further from finding his brothers than he’d ever been before. Dying _sucked,_ but waking up to find out that you were an even bigger failure than usual sucked more.

 _But wait,_ a little voice whispered, a voice he had silenced hours before. _What if they’re here? They fought, and if they died..._

_It might have been with a weapon in hand._

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he murmured to himself, burying his face into his pillow. He tried to take his mind off his family, and instead focused on Hotel Valhalla. He’d seen a lot of things today: a girl getting killed for winning Uno, a bellhop with a beard so big it could wrap twice around his body, and an Unidentifiable Animal that everyone at Valhalla just _ate_ without any concern for what they were putting in their bodies.

But Bloodhound...Bloodhound intrigued him most of all. He thought of the way the rest of the einherjar had looked at him after his rune reading, and why Wraith was being judged for bringing them _both_ into Valhalla. Maybe they were connected somehow. Maybe Wraith had answers.

He wondered how willing she would be to answer a few hundred of his questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mashes apex with an interest nobody cares about] now THIS is self care!
> 
> so this is basically a magnus chase au but without magnus chase bc uhhh i wanted to...i think i did well enough establishing it so non magnus chase fans wouldnt be confused but it u have any questions feel free to ask!!
> 
> argr is a nordic insult that means "unmanly" and can be used to insult a trans person or an effeminate man. some characters will misgender bloodhound in future chapters but they WILL be dealt with in the old fashioned valhalla way.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for the nice anons and the nice comment i got on the last chapter !! im glad at least a couple of people are enjoying this !! i thought this would be too obscure of an interest but im glad some ppl like it !!
> 
> sorry if theres any typos!!

When Elliott woke up, he immediately started screaming. Not because of anything particularly horrifying, but rather, he started screaming because he woke up and he was still there. In Hotel Valhalla. After falling asleep on a bigass bed in his day clothes.

It hadn’t been a bad, drunk dream. It hadn't been a hallucination brought on by two days of not sleeping and spending every moment crying. It was real, and a little dude with metal legs on the verge of kicking his door down was all the proof he needed.

“HEY,” Octavio shouted through the door, voice recognizable to Elliott even after having only known him for a day. “WAKE UP. LET’S EAT BREAKFAST TOGETHER, OKAY? SEE YOU IN AN HOUR.”

Elliott wondered if breakfast was mandatory. He wanted to stay inside his room all day and cry, but didn’t want to risk getting physically dragged out of his room by a wolf, so he reluctantly got to his feet to start the day.

Someone had been in his room last night to clean up the couch pillows he had accidentally knocked to the floor–or maybe they had replaced themselves magically. He preferred the latter, because the thought of Hunding and his large axe stomping around Elliott’s room while he slept was terrifying.

He undressed out of the clothes he had died in: a yellow flannel shirt and jeans that had magically been cleaned of all blood and beer stains when he woke up in Valhalla for the first time. Discarding them on the floor, he took a deep breath, and turned to look at his reflection in the mirror.

The first thing he said was, “What the fuck.”

Elliott was...as the kids say, _swole._ Not overly buff and jacked like some of the Viking kids he had seen in the Feast Hall of the Slain, but definitely much better looking than he had been while he was alive. The tummy he had always struggled to love was slimmed down the slightest bit so he now had more pronounced abs, and his biceps looked more like his brothers’ than his own. Not only that, but his hair and beard were at the perfect length, despite the fact that the state of his facial hair had been decidedly Hunding-like when he died.

He flexed his arms in awe, looking at all the muscle. He still seemed to be about the same weight and a similar build as to when he died, but the weight was now distributed elsewhere, and he seemed...perfect. As perfect as Elliott could be. There were still scars on his face, over his eye and across his nose, but he always thought they added to his rugged charm, so he was glad to see them not gone.

Deciding he would have plenty of time to gawk at his appearance later, he showered quickly and dressed into a pair of clean pants and a shirt, because his entire wardrobe seemed to have been taken out of his apartment, dry-cleaned, and then placed inside his Valhalla closet. There were even outfits in there that he’d never worn in his life, but he gave a low, appreciative whistle when he saw them.

Things were starting to seem more okay the longer he spent in the confines of his own room. The clothes, the bed, his suddenly perfect body...maybe the pros of being an einherjar were starting to outweigh the cons.

He was flipping through a room service menu while waiting for his hair to dry when a strange, distorted noise got his attention. He looked up to see Wraith standing there, looking a little harried, though she had clearly showered before she got here. Her hair wasn't as greasy as it had been yesterday, and the sloppiness of her bun made him wonder if her dishvelement was due simply to her not caring for her appearance or just being too _busy_ to care. There were horrendous dark circles under her eyes and when she saw him, her fists clenched at her sides like she had come all this way to fight him.

“I thought I was the only one who could enter my room,” Elliott said, deciding to hold back his comment of _You look terrible._ He liked having his fingers whole.

“Special Valkyrie perks.” Wraith looked him directly in his eyes, almost challenging him to point out her obvious lie. “I was making sure you hadn’t run away.”

Elliott lowered the room service menu. “...I can do that?”

“Technically, yes,” Wraith said, glancing around his room. “There are hundreds of doorways in Valhalla that lead to the Nine Worlds. The bathroom on floor sixty-four leads to the AMC near Boston Common. There’s a trick staircase in the service hallway that takes you right into Fenway Park.”

“Quick question,” Elliott said, struggling to comprehend this information. “Is there a reason this Nordic afterlife takes place in Boston?”

“Yes,” Wraith said.

A beat passed.

“Are you going to explain..?”

“No.”

“Right.” He felt like crying again, but not for any sort of emotional turmoil–he just couldn’t believe he had died and moved to fucking _Boston._ “Uh, also, why am I...like...buff?”

“Einherjar are reborn with their idealized bodies,” Wraith said, walking across his room and taking a look at the shelves. He hadn’t noticed before, but there were several picture frames on it, and he stood up to look with her. “Within reason.”

“So why does Octavio Silva have metal legs if he’s supposed to be reborn like, whole?”

“Idealized body, Witt,” Wraith said, sounding a little annoyed as she picked up a photo before he could look at it. “Not whole, not perfect. _Idealized._ If Octavio wanted legs, he could have them. But he was perfectly content with his disability.”

Her voice held the same hard edge as when she had defended Bloodhound, and he wondered how many times her picks for Valhalla had gotten challenged. Wasn’t this whole floor full of einherjar she’d saved? How many of them hadn't been up to the Valhalla standard of Viking?

All questions fled out of his mind when he got a proper look at the photo in her hands: it was placed in a golden frame, and had no visible signs of aging despite being at least twenty years old.

A ten-year-old Elliott Witt was smiling at the camera, surrounded by his brothers. Matthew was giving Nathan a noogie, and Chris looked like he’d rather be anywhere but there. Their mother stood to the side, curly hair peeking out from under her headscarf and giving the camera a serene smile, though one quick glance downwards showed that she was restraining their extremely large pitbull, Chops.

“How..?” He took the picture roughly from Wraith, staring at it hard, as if by doing so the people in the frame would magically come to life and answer his questions. “Where did-?”

“This is your afterlife,” Wraith said quietly, watching his expression. “It’s tailored for you.”

Elliott’s fingers trembled as he looked at his brothers’ faces, his mother’s smile, Chops’s snarl. He remembered the day this picture was taken: he’d turned into a meerkat on the way to the mall, and when he turned back into a human, his mother had made a little ‘tut-tut’ noise with her tongue and said, _You’re a mess, Ell._ She’d tucked his shirt back into his pants, smoothed his hair back, and gave him a kiss on his forehead.

He missed that. He missed that more than anything.

“...It’s breakfast time.” Wraith touched his arm gently, and he almost believed she felt sorry for him. “You should go. It’s not easy to die on an empty stomach.”

Elliott sniffled, raising a hand up to wipe at the tears forming in his eyes because yes, Wraith had watched him die in an embarrassing way, but he still had an image to keep up. Then what she said caught up to him, and he stammered, “It’s not easy to what?”

There were lounges on every floor in Valhalla. Elliott found Octavio and Ajay arguing over who got to use the last bit of whip cream on their pancakes–horrifying stacks of strawberries, chocolate, and syrup–in the lounge located on the end of floor sixty-nine. Plush, modern couches dotted the area, with four long breakfast tables spaced out for hallmates to eat together at. A buffet table showcased the food available, though several einherjar had simply taken plates of the food to their table to form a mini buffet themselves.

“You used it yesterday,” Ajay was saying as Elliott approached, yanking the can from Octavio's hands. “Fair is fair, Silva.

“Yeah, but you killed me on Tuesday!” Octavio gave an exaggerated pout, and the piercings right below his bottom lip were _extremely_ distracting to Elliott. “You owe me!”

“It was an accident!”

“It took me a whole day to reform!”

“I apologized!”

Elliott turned around so he could ask Wraith if it was too late to use one of those doorways to leave Valhalla, but she was gone. Stupid unhelpful mysterious Valkyries.

“Buenos dias,” Octavio said, giving Elliott a smile. His teeth were stained from the pancakes. “You ready to die?”

“No,” Elliott said, not even trying to put on a brave face. “Not really.”

“Here’s today’s schedule if you want to do anything,” Ajay said, gesturing to a chalkboard on the wall. A chattering einherji was still writing things down, but the activities listed so far were _SPEAR-THROWING TO THE DEATH!, BOMB DISPOSAL TO THE DEATH!,_ and _ZUMBA TO THE DEATH!_ He figured he would be able to avoid dying if he just never took a zumba class. “But before we do that, we have to do battle-training.”

“What.”

“We train for Ragnarok every day, for about an hour,” Ajay explained, passing Elliott several options for breakfast. Pancakes. Fruit. Oatmeal. Tree bark. He wondered how many of those things were made up of Unidentifiable Animal. “It’s mandatory. We can’t all be out of shape when the end of the world hits.”

Elliott had learned a lot of information in the past twenty-four hours, and he felt like if he asked more questions, his head would eventually explode, so he decided to swallow down his questions of _When the fuck even is Ragnarok_ in favor of eating oatmeal.

Octavio and Ajay returned to arguing over whipped cream as he ate, trying to maintain calmness. Aside from his little screaming fit in the morning, he thought he was doing pretty well on his second day of Valhalla. He hadn’t fainted yet, didn’t feel like throwing up, and had all his limbs intact. He wasn’t doing excellent, but he certainly wasn’t doing _terrible._ This was fine so far.

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced up, freezing momentarily when he came face-to-face with Bloodhound. At least, he assumed it was Bloodhound. They were wearing a different mask today, and different gear, but it was in a similar enough style to yesterday’s outfit that he was able to tell who they were even before they spoke.

“Hallo,” they said by way of greeting, filtered voice alerting the kids of their presence. They both gave Bloodhound a wave before jumping right back into their argument. Kids these days were so tenacious.

“Morning,” Elliott said, because that seemed polite, and also, he was trying to get on their good side because they kind of scared him. He also couldn't help but still feel like they had a connection to one another somehow, like Bloodhound having arrived before he did meant something. He realized he had been staring at them for a little too long and tried to cover it up by asking,

“Do you uh...do you eat? With the mask and all?”

“Rarely,” they said honestly, and the raven on their shoulder gave a little _caw._ “Everybody here knows what my... _f_ _ace_ looks like. It was broadcasted."

The kids’ arguing died down a little and they both suddenly looked uncomfortable– Elliott could only guess as to why. As if sensing the innumerable amount of questions he had, Bloodhound elaborated calmly,

“Wraith cannot alter Valkyrie Vision videos. Seconds before I died, my killer removed my mask, and everyone saw my appearance. Despite this, I like to keep myself covered. This is how I spent most of my life.”

“Makes sense,” Elliott said, even though he couldn’t imagine walking around in a gas mask every day. He wondered what was so bad about their appearance that made Octavio and Ajay go quiet like that, or if maybe it was. Like. A gender thing. Nathan would probably understand better than him.

“I am only here so I can join you in our daily battle.” They continued, derailing Elliott's train of thought as they sat beside Elliott, somehow poised and yet improper at the same time. Their shoulders were hunched, but their legs were crossed in a very lady-like–er... _they-like_ –manner.

Ajay and Octavio had finally stopped arguing over whipped cream and were now comparing weapons. Matthew had been a real weapons nut, and Elliott felt a pang when Ajay unclasped the shield from her forearm and hit it against Octavio’s head. He knew his oldest brother would have gone bonkers over all the spears and swords and maces in Valhalla, and he wondered if he was here now, on his own floor, admiring the Viking weapons.

“Where is _your_ weapon?” Bloodhound asked, once again breaking him from his thoughts about his brothers, and he glanced over towards them, eyebrows raised. “Unless you fight without one?”

“Oh,” Elliott said, and felt like the oatmeal he'd just ate was about to make an unwelcome appearance. "Where do I get one?"

"You should have one in your room." They tilted their head, dog-like in a way. "Did you not see it?"

He had not. There had simply been _too much_ to look at in his room: the magazines, the clothes, the hair products. He hadn't been on the lookout for any kind of sword–but he probably should have, if he was expected to do everything to the death.

"I will help you find it," Bloodhound said, and stood back up. He had half a mind to say _'haha no thanks I'll just die',_ but for some reason Wraith's angry and annoyed face swam before his vision. He probably wouldn't be doing her any favors if he was just as pathetic on the battlefield as he had been in real life, so he got up and awkwardly followed Bloodhound back to his own room.

He checked inside his closet, under his bed, and even went through all his movies, but found no sharp item that would aid him in slaughter. He _did_ find a lot of neat things, like a TV guide with over a thousand channels and a fluffy Hotel Valhalla bathrobe, but no sword or knife or battle-axe.

Bloodhound watched him scramble before walking into his bathroom and opening the vanity cabinet. He didn't know how TRESemmé would help him fight people, but he was open to suggestions. He did _not_ want to be running around empty-handed like an idiot.

He was about to ask them what they were looking for when they turned around, a familiar object in their hand.

"This might be your weapon."

It was.

The mirror.

_The fucking mirror._

Elliott took it from the other delicately, staring at his own reflection in shock. It had been completely reformed, free of all blood, looking as new as the day his mother had handed it to him. There were no cracks down the middle, no dents in the handle, and its gold color shone like it had been polished. The markings around the mirror's edge seemed especially shiny today. Have they _always_ been that shiny? He remembered thinking they were just dull scratch marks, but now that he was looking at the way they glowed, he realized they reminded him of the runes on his door key.

It was pretty cool that his mirror was here with him, but....

" _This_ is my weapon?" He asked, eyebrows furrowing. "I _get_ that I have deadly good looks and all. But. I'm supposed to fight with _this?_ "

"Everybody gets reborn with the weapon they died with, as well as a hotel-issued sword and shield," Bloodhound said, crossing their arms over their chest. "It seems that someone thought it would be funny if you only had the mirror."

Elliott could feel his face going red, wondering if this was supposed to be a jab at his faked confidence and vanity. He tried redirecting the conversation by saying, "And where do I get one of those swords?"

"You can borrow mine. I have my own weapons."

“Cool. Thanks.” They both stood there awkwardly for a moment while Elliott tilted the mirror this way and that, staring at the different ways the light glinted off the runes. “So. How did you know this was here anyway?”

“I can sense magical items,” Bloodhound hummed, voice now lilting a little so they sounded rather curious. “I have a nose for it.”

Elliott didn’t think they were joking, and all questions he had about a magical-item-tracker-nose he had were outweighed by, “Wait, this mirror is _magic?”_

“It is,” they confirmed, tapping a finger against the marks on the edge of the mirror. “ _Mannuz. Eihwaz. Ansuz._ Self, communication, and wisdom."

Elliott had not thought the runes actually _meant_ something–he thought they were just there to look cool for the aesthetic. But ‘self, communication, and wisdom’? Could this mirror have been the key to what he was looking for all along? Excitement caused his heart to pound as he stared at his own reflection, taking in his scars, his gold-flecked eyes and his too-perfect face. He half-expected his mother’s expression to appear in the mirror too, giving him a knowing smile. _Let’s play a game, Ell. Count to ten and come find me._

He tilted the mirror over and over, waiting for something to happen. Bloodhound was staring too, evidently still curious. Nothing showed for a solid minute, but he flicked his wrist in such a way that every single rune on the mirror caught the light above, and he swore he saw a word in his reflection before it vanished.

“H...in? Hin?” He stuttered, trying to figure out what he had just read.

“Hoedin,” Bloodhound said.

There was a pause.

“It’s the wifi password,” they continued.

When Elliott gave them a blank stare, they shrugged. “Silva set it. Who gifted you this mirror?"

"My mother." His face scrunching up in confusion and disappointment, Elliott looked back down at the mirror. “Why would I need the wifi password? Wait, do we even have internet here?”

“Yes. You can put in a request for a laptop, but now is not the time,” Bloodhound said, turning their back on him. He felt like their curiosity about his magic mirror had been satisfied. “Perhaps the mirror will be more useful later. Now come. I shall give you my sword.”

* * *

Elliott had a sword now, which was definitely an upgrade from the mirror, with a minor issue: he had no idea how to use it. He had given it a test-swung as he and his hallmates of floor sixty-nine waded out onto the battlefield and had nearly cut Ajay’s arm off. After much apologizing and much exasperated eye-rolling on her part, he decided to keep it at his side. His mirror was shoved into the inside of his Hotel Valhalla provided armor, which was just a breastplate with a wolf head on it. He did not feel keen on it so soon after dying, but at least he was wearing armor. Unlike Octavio, who was–

“Is that a crop top?” He asked, bewildered. Octavio had on a crop top, shorts, metal braces on his forearms, and an elevation mask, the sort that runners use for high-altitude training. The outfit was pretty well-coordinated and the colors complemented his steel legs, but he must stress: it was a _crop top._

“I die here every day. I might as well die in style.” Elliott couldn’t see Octavio’s mouth, but knew by the way his eyes were scrunching up that he was smiling. “Gotta spice it up to keep it new.”

“He relies too much on me,” Ajay said with a roll of her eyes. She shot Elliott one of her now familiar smiles. “You can come to me for healin’ if you survive long enough.”

Elliott eyed her, looking for any signs of a first-aid kit. “You a doctor?”

“She is _Vanir-spawn,_ ” Bloodhound said, and Elliott nearly jumped a mile in the air because he hadn’t noticed them joining the group. They had stayed behind after giving Elliott a sword to collect their own weapons. “Daughter of Frey, but a fellow warrior.”

“I have a lot of provin’ to do,” Ajay said, basking in Bloodhound's praise, though Elliott personally thought _‘Vanir-spawn’_ sounded like an insult. “Taking me a while to show everyone that a child of Frey can be a good einherji, but I think I’m gettin’ there.”

“Frey,” Bloodhound said, noticing Elliott’s lost look. “Is the god of healing. Amongst other things.”

“Not cool things,” Octavio said, earning a smack from Ajay. They all came to a stop at the bottom of a hill, and Elliott took this time to glance around. Hundreds of thousands of einherjar warriors were spilling out onto the fields, which were so vast he wondered how this place managed to reside in Boston without anyone noticing. The sky overhead was blue, the grass was so green it looked as if it had been colored with crayon, and at any given time you could go blind from the amount of sun glinting off the metal of einherjar weapons.

He suddenly felt nervous. He had been pushing the fact that they would all be fighting to the death to the back of his mind, but now that he was faced with so many people looking eager to sink their blades into a child of Loki, he could feel his stomach churning. What would happen if he died? Wasn’t he supposed to get decapitated today? Would his body be dragged away by wolves like that girl from yesterday? 

“Calm,” Bloodhound said, and he felt their hand on his shoulder. “We will fight strong, and if we die, we will be reborn. This is how the gods will it."

“Thanks,” he said, half-genuinely. There it went again: that connection he felt with them, a comfort in their brief touch. He then noticed that they had a lot of small weapons hanging from their belt: hunting knives, tomahawks, and what might have been a collapsible spear. Ajay had a pair of drumsticks as well as a shield, and Octavio had a lot of knives and too little protection from knives. 

Other halls had a mixture of swords, axes, and AK-47s. He didn’t feel so confident fighting beside his hallmates. No offense to them.

A gong suddenly sounded, and everything went to chaos.

Elliott had not been prepared for the bloodbath it turned out to be: he didn’t know why, but he had imagined something a little more coordinated, like everyone taking turns and attacking in lines. He was pretty good at mimicking other people, and had figured he’d just watch what the others did before dying in a humiliating way.

It wasn’t like that. At all.

Octavio instantly bolted away from them so fast he wondered if his metal legs came with a speed-enhancing factor. Bloodhound threw a knife at an approaching einherji, which buried itself in her forehead. She flung a small axe at them, which Bloodhound dodged with ease. It nearly turned Elliott into two, and not in the bamboozle way. 

People all around them were fighting each other, metal clanging against metal and blood occasionally spraying everywhere if a major artery was hit. He was in awe of the physical abilities of everyone he saw: they all seemed to run faster, jump higher, and hit harder than regular human beings. He wondered if _he_ could now do any of that.

Ajay was playing defensively, raising her shield to protect her hallmates from oncoming arrows, bullets, and throwing knives. If she needed to, she occasionally hit a drumstick against the skull of an einherji, which stunned them long enough for Bloodhound to kill them with a knife or a tomahawk or a collapsible spear.

Octavio was in the distance, stabbing people, jumping on their backs, and being a nuisance. He hadn’t gotten impaled yet, which may be a perk of being fast and small, but it was making Elliott nervous. 

But not as nervous as when Ajay suddenly shouted, “Oi! Witt! Be some help, would ya?”

Two large einherjar had approached her, twins in every sense of the word: matching beard-lengths, matching swords, matching tattoos that said I <3 SIF. He did not want to raise his sword against them, but Ajay gave him a scary look that made him raise his sword-arm and shout, “Hey, c’mere, uglies!”

They both gave him matching looks of contempt before side-stepping Ajay and walking towards him directly.

Oh, crap.

Elliott decided now would be a good time to bamboozle, and bamboozle he did: he stepped out of the way, leaving behind a visible imprint of himself. The air warped for a half a second, noticeable to nobody but Elliott himself, who had been doing this for so many years he could see the chinks in the armor, so to speak. Ugly #1 swung his sword down, slicing decoy-Elliott right down the middle. Ugly #2 laughed until decoy-Elliott fizzled into nothingness. They both scratched their heads, looking comically lost, until Ajay hit them both with her drumsticks.

“Nice party trick,” she said. “But I need you to stab some people.”

Elliott looked down at the sword in his hands, which hadn’t seen much use. “I have no idea how to use this thing.”

“It’s time to learn.”

“But-"

“Ajay!” A voice shouted, and they both turned to see Octavio standing there, elevation mask hanging from his chin and he himself missing a nose. “I need heals!”

“Look at you! What did I say about running off?" She snapped, raising her hand up to his face. She then started glowing. Like, literally glowing. The battlefield was temporarily doused in golden light, not unlike the gold that had surrounded Wraith when she took Elliott from that dark alleyway, and Elliott suddenly felt warm all over even if she wasn’t healing him, and raised a hand up to block the light from blinding him.

The light suddenly went out, and he heard a strangled gasp. Lowering his hand, he realized with shock that Ajay had been impaled. With a spear. In her stomach.

In fact, the spear had not only gone through her, but Octavio as well. 

“Dude,” Octavio complained, looking mildly inconvenienced. “He got me _again._ ”

“I hate you,” Ajay said, and they both keeled over at the same time.

Elliott thought it was kind of sweet they were both constantly dying at the same time together, but now he was without one of the things keeping him from joining them: Ajay’s handy-dandy shield and drumstick abilities.

With the rest of einherjar realizing their line of defense had just turned into an einherjar kebab, they started advancing, very ready to turn Elliott into a Loki Lunchable. He had no idea where all this hatred was coming from, but had a sinking feeling it was from the rune-reading last night and Bloodhound’s presence.

And speaking of Bloodhound, they were still calmly killing people behind him, occasionally giving out a very animalistic grunt that made him glad they were in his hall and not, like, floor seventy. He accidentally brushed his elbow with theirs and jolted a little when they turned to him and said, "Fight strong. We will survive the daily _slatra_ if we work together."

Elliott wanted to say something along the lines of _I don't want to have to survive anything,_ but his words were cut off by a knife flying towards his face. He barely managed to duck, but it grazed his cheek as it whizzed by, and he felt blood running down his neck. Sweeping his gaze around, he saw a dozen bloodthirsty einherjar and only one ally by his side.

Deciding to be a bit of a coward about this, Elliott bent reality just a bit–just a bit meaning creating five imprints of himself–and cloaking himself long enough to slide down the hill, ducking behind a boulder before his magic had faded away. It was a pretty useful bit of warping he had gotten the hang of, but only lasted a couple of seconds, and left him susceptible to temporary dizziness, nausea, and nosebleeds.

After he finished emptying his breakfast onto the grass, he reached into his breastplate and pulled out the mirror, giving it a little shake. “Any ideas? Help? Fighting techniques? Power moves? You in there, mom?

Nothing happened–the only thing different about his reflection was the new scar on his cheek. Elliott tried a new tactic:

“Mirror mirror, in my hand, please let me understand.”

If this was supposed to be a magic mirror and it had the word ‘wisdom’ engraved on it, he was hoping it would give him just that: wisdom. But again, nothing happened. Maybe this piece of junk was only good for WiFi passwords.

“Found him!” A voice shrieked over his head, and he looked up just in time to see a very large man leaping into the air. He rolled out of the way, accidentally cutting his own shin with his sword, and dropped it to the ground with a hiss of pain. The man had a long braid, and braided in that braid were tiny little bones that made Elliott think Valhalla had an animal cruelty problem. He was about to get to his feet and run away again, or perhaps turn into a meerkat, when another person blocked his view of the large man. He looked up to see Taejoon Park.

Except he didn’t really recognize Taejoon Park. He wasn’t the guy from yesterday who had saved a truckload of kidnapped kids, or the guy who had hidden his face from everyone after being told he’d achieve great things. This guy was looking at him critically, sword held tightly in his hands like he was imagining painting the inside of his room with Elliott’s blood. He had adjusted to this whole einherjar thing faster than Elliott had.

He swore he saw something flash in the other's eyes.

“This one’s mine,” Taejoon said, and then Elliott lost his head. Literally.

* * *

Elliott’s dreams had never made much sense. Some of them were normal dream-weird, like getting chased by a giant pork chop down 54th Street, or accidentally going to work naked. Others were a bit weirder, like that time right after his mother disappeared, he had dreamed that a lady who resembled Two-Face was staring him directly in the eyes and speaking old Norse. But _dreams,_ right?

Anyways, he dreamed after getting decapitated, which he didn’t think was possible, but he also definitely wasn't _really_ standing in Helgi's office, so there wasn't any other explanation. 

It was paneled with wood, with a large desk in the middle and several comfy-looking plush chairs. There was a computer at his desk, which was modern by Viking standards, but clearly ran on Windows 94. All in all, the office looked perfectly normal, except for the fact that one wall was just a window, and outside that window a very large squirrel was pressing its cheeks against the glass and fogging it with its breath. And that squirrel was _big._ Like, elephant big. Maybe even bigger.

Helgi himself sat behind the desk, looking tired. Wraith stood before him, looking somehow even more tired. It looked like a meeting between exhausted people, except for the squirrel, who was just fine and now running its tongue grotesquely across the window and trying to get the attention of the room's occupants.

“I understand you have a mission from Odin,” Helgi was saying, stroking his beard. “A mission you won’t even bother telling us, but I digress: your picks for Valhalla are getting out of hand. The disabled boy, the Vanir-spawn, the jotun and now? That son of Loki? He’s a fool. Our goal here at Hotel Valhalla is to create warriors, not cannon fodder.”

“They all have potential,” Wraith said, and from her green scarf she pulled her kunai. Elliott was worried she was going to stab Helgi, but she just spun it around her finger, an impressive little party-trick she wasn’t even putting much effort in. “You just refuse to see it. Your view is narrow-minded.”

Helgi gave a great inhale that ruffled his beard, looking down at the sheets of paperwork in front of him. The squirrel to his right opened its mouth in a scream that nobody could hear, probably because the window was sound-proof. It then turned its bushy tail and ran, so now Elliott could properly see out the window: it looked over several large branches, large green leaves fluttering serenely in the wind. 

Yggdrasil. The World Tree. Holy _fuck_ was it big. Elliott suddenly felt like Hotel Valhalla was little more than a tree house–no, not even _that_ big. More like a bird's nest full of ugly Viking chicklings.

“Captain Anita has some concerns,” Helgi said after a long while of rumination, but Wraith cut him off before he could get very far.

“Captain Anita did not appoint me. Odin did. Therefore, only Odin may strip me of my Valkyrie privileges. Any problems with _her_ einherjar have nothing to do with me.” She looked down at the kunai in hand, blue eyes seeing something Elliott couldn’t. “...I have somewhere to be. We can discuss this at a later date."

Helgi made no move to stop her as she sliced her kunai through the air, and it was like reality was getting torn apart: a crack appeared down the middle, right in midair, that showed a view similar to the one in Helgi’s window: swaying leaves and large branches. She stepped through the portal, and reality suddenly righted itself. Helgi was now alone, staring out the window. Wraith didn’t appear there, but the squirrel peered out from a hole in the trunk and gave Helgi a rude gesture that shouldn’t have been possible with its squirrel hands.

The dream shifted so Elliott was now standing in a hospital room, watching his own birth.

Okay, not _really,_ but it was pretty weird to see his mother holding Baby Elliott while a man he'd never seen before watched. Matthew, Nathan, and Chris were all asleep in a pile on the hospital couch, but the sleep was unnatural. No snores or quiet sniffles. Just stillness and silence. It was disturbing.

"You _can't_ take him," Evelyn Witt was saying, and Elliott had a sinking feeling that the man before her was Loki. He had tousled dirty blonde hair and a rather chiseled face, with eyes that reminded Elliott of his own in certain light: sometimes, if the lighting was just right, Elliott's eyes seemed a brownish-red. That was the color of Loki's eyes.

He'd be a pretty handsome guy if it weren't for the fact that his face was scarred heavily. Elliott knew what the scars were from–he'd read the old tale about Loki being tied up and having a snake drip venom into his eyes every day, and his mother had told him _wrong_ his father's face had looked, but he hadn't thought it'd be _this_ bad. 

Loki spread his arms wide, giving Evelyn a sheepish grin, and Elliott instantly knew he was an enemy when he saw the Red Sox jersey. _Fucking Boston._

"I don't need him _now,_ " Loki said, and despite his words, Evelyn clutched baby-Elliott closer to her chest. "I need him a bit later on down the line. He's gonna be a _massive_ help to me! I can finally escape these bonds, after so many years!"

"I won't let him." Evelyn glanced towards her sleeping sons, brow furrowing, before glancing back at Loki. "And you can't use _them_ either. They're not yours."

"I have no intention to use regular mortals," Loki said dismissively, before leaning close to baby-Elliott. Evelyn didn't react fast enough–Loki tapped baby-Elliott and a tiny little mark appeared on his skin. It looked like a tattoo: snakes forming a _S_ shape. "Lil' Ell here is _all I need."_

* * *

The days passed in the same fashion: Elliott woke up, remembered he was dead, screamed, and then got himself together in time for breakfast. He ate with his floor sixty-nine hallmates, died on the battlefield in an embarrassing way, and reformed sometime after lunch. Some days he ordered room service and found that the pork chops tasted way better than anything he’d ever had in his mortal life, which made him whisper a quiet little apology to his grandfather every time he thought that.

Appearances from Octavio Silva and Ajay Che became common in his every-day life, appearing at his door to invite him to activities to the death or give him tours. Apparently, there were enough places in Valhalla for them to give him a one-hour tour a day. They spent three separate days touring the on-site Ikea, which had five floors and got all of them lost several times before eventually giving up.

They were good kids, so he didn’t mind their company, but their bickering sometimes made him wish he was in the company of Bloodhound instead, whom he hadn’t seen much of outside of mealtimes and daily battles. He thought they might be mad at him after he abandoned them in the middle of a fight.

He also hadn’t seen Wraith since that dream he had about her, which he wasn’t sure was even real. As soon as he'd woken up, he'd checked all over his body for the tiny tattoo Loki had given him, but found no new marks (aside from a mole he was _definitely_ sure had never been on his stomach.) He hadn’t brought the dreams up to anyone yet, pretty sure they were some post-decapitation hallucination. He also felt that if he told Wraith he had eavesdropped on her conversation with Helgi, she’d shove him through that little portal of hers and leave him to become squirrel food.

Before he realized it, two weeks had passed, and he now woke up and thought “I’m gonna die today” without screaming. A vast improvement from the past, and also not comforting in the slightest. Just what was his (after)life coming to?

At breakfast he ate pancakes without whipped cream because Octavio and Ajay had already split it between themselves, having found a compromise–a compromise that left none for anyone else. Despite having settled their whipped cream argument, they now had something else to annoy each other about:

“I’m asking him today,” Octavio said, shovelling blueberry-Nutella-marshmallow pancakes into his mouth. “Before dinner.”

“You’re crazy. He’s gonna kill ya,” Ajay said, and Elliott knew she meant it literally. “Besides, you hear what floor he’s on? One hundred fifty-four. What if he’s, like, forty?”

“He’s thirty-one!” Octavio said this with a smug smile. “I asked Anita!”

“Who are we talking about? What’s going on?” Elliott asked, reaching for the powdered sugar. It was the one thing neither of them touched, which just meant more for him.

“Taejoon Park,” Ajay said, taking a sip from her milkshake and giving them both a disapproving look, like Elliott was somehow on Octavio’s side in this. “He’s gonna ask him out.”

Elliott jolted right as he poured the powdered sugar on his pancakes, which caused half the container to release its contents all over the table. “Taejoon Park? The guy who keeps killing me? _That_ Taejoon Park?"

“He’s hot,” Octavio said defensively, and Elliott noted that he was blushing just a little bit. “And I think he likes me back. I said hi to him and-"

“He looked at you _one time,_ ” Ajay said exasperatedly.

“And smiled! He smiled at me!"

“Probably ‘cause you’re funny-looking!”

“Wait,” Elliott said, cleaning up the mess as best he could with a little towel. It had _HV_ embroidered on it and was so fluffy and white he almost felt bad for dirtying it. “You guys aren’t. You know. Together?”

Octavio and Ajay both froze in the middle of their arguing, like they had never been asked that question before. They both gave him wide-eyed looks, before glancing at one another and bursting into loud laughter.

“Us? Dating? _Loco._ Where the hell did you even get _that_ idea?” Octavio laughed, lips stained blue from his pancakes. “She’s like my _sister._ Not that I’d ever want to be Vanir-spawn, but...you know.”

“I like women,” Ajay said bluntly, so bluntly that Elliott gave a snort.

Okay, so that was...a bit of a surprise. He’d just _assumed..._ he suddenly heard Nathan’s voice in his head, joking, _‘don’t be heteronormative, Elliott.’_

Trying to rid himself of the memory, he latched onto the latter part of Octavio's sentence: “I should have asked this before, but what the hell is _Vanir-spawn?_ "

“Gods are split into two clans,” a voice said, and Elliott accidentally knocked his orange juice over with his elbow when he jumped. He looked up and saw that Bloodhound had joined them, wearing one of their now-familiar masks. He started hastily cleaning up his mess again, ears burning red because he'd made a fool of himself in front of them again. “Aesir and Vanir. Aesir are the most well-known gods. Odin, Thor, Frigg, Loki. You are Aesir-spawn. The Vanir are one with nature, and typically their offspring don’t go to Valhalla because they are pacifists.”

“It’s why everybody thought I was a sissy at first,” Ajay said with a shrug. “It don’t bother me that much. I know I deserve to be here.”

“So...wait. If there’s other afterlives, then what decides who comes here?” Elliott asked, and Wraith’s piercing gaze swam before his eyes. “Like, aside from Valkyries? Do we all have to be demigods?”

“We all gotta have connection to the old Norse, or Scandinavia, or what-fucking-ever,” Octavio said, sounding bored. “You’re a child of Loki, Ajay’s a daughter of Frey, Bloodhound’s...well. Uh. A religious fanatic?”

They tipped their head towards him, but said nothing.

“What about you?” Elliott asked.

“Dude, I’m a little bit of everything.” Octavio finished his pancakes and shoved the plate away. Elliott had no idea how he could eat so much and remain so slim. Maybe it was an einherjar perk. “My dad’s Japanese-Brazilian and my mom’s Mexican-something. Who knows if there’s a little bit of god mixed in there?”

“I still think Wraith just took pity on you when she came for me,” Ajay said.

The battle that took place after that went by quick, because Elliott was no longer trying to stay alive. He died quickly after much aimless swinging of his sword and reformed before lunch. He ate quickly by himself, and his hallmates had just walked into the lounge as well when he got up to leave. He bade them a quick goodbye, promising he’d take another tour with them later, and stepped past the spear-gridded elevator doors and pressed the button for floor one hundred fifty-three.

There was something _else_ Elliott had been doing every single day since he got into Valhalla. Matthew was eleven years older than him, Nathan nine, and Chris three. That was floor one hundred and sixteen to floor two hundred and ninety. Two different age groups, nearly two hundred floors, and thousands of einherjar. There was a chance that this brothers were among them–even if this morning’s discussion had discouraged him slightly, maybe their relation to Elliott would be Nordic enough for Hotel Valhalla. 

After all, there were thousands of people here. Every night in the Feast Hall of the Slain, Elliott watched at least three newly dead’s heroic deeds. There couldn’t be _that_ many people who were religious fanatics like Bloodhound or a demigod like he and Ajay. There had to be _some_ leniency in the rules of what qualified someone for Valhalla, and Elliott wasn’t going to let go of the slight possibility that his brothers might have died and gotten here before him.

The elevator rolled smoothly to a stop, and Swedish Duke Ellington quieted down. Elliott stepped out into the hall, approaching the lounge with some trepidation. He frequented several halls over and over, because there were dozens of einherjar per floor, and he’d be dumb to think he’d seen them all after only one visit. He had visited this particular floor several times, but not just because he hadn’t seen them all. _Mostly_ because he was afraid of running into Taejoon Park and getting decapitated. Again. Or impaled. Again. Or burned alive. Also again.

Taejoon lived on floor one hundred and fifty-four, and Elliott was afraid that the moment he stepped foot onto it, he would be attacked. He had no idea what the guy’s beef with him was, but he was scary to fight, especially because he always seemed to know where Elliott was hiding. He hoped Octavio wasn’t currently up there, also getting run through by Taejoon’s sword after a failed flirting attempt.

Today’s venture through one fifty-three wielded no new results: he asked several people if they’d heard of his brothers, but they either didn’t take him seriously and laughed him off or gave him a look of pity. This was fine. He wouldn’t give up, not yet. Not until he’d combed every _inch_ of _every_ hall in Valhalla.

He often looked for them at dinner too. The battlefield was too chaotic to seek them out, and sure, there were a lot of einherjar crowded into the Feast Hall of the Slain, but he was constantly on the lookout for Matthew’s head of blonde hair or Chris’s numerous tattoos.

He’d also finally caved and taken a bite of Unidentifiable Animal, and honestly, it wasn’t _so_ bad. He still didn’t know how the hell it could be pork and chicken teriyaki at the same time, but it tasted fine and hadn’t made him sick yet, so that was a plus. He still didn’t trust the goat mead though, even if he thought it was okay-tasting. Ajay had told him the water came from the stag’s horns, which. He did not trust horn juice one bit.

Octavio was nowhere to be seen, which Ajay took as a grim affirmation that yes, he had been killed, and yes, he would most definitely try asking again tomorrow. 

After dinner, Elliott hallway-hopped again, this time through floors one thirty to one forty, before deciding to give up and retire. There was always tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. He had until Ragnarok to look for his brothers. He’d met some people here who have been here for hundreds of years, and though it drove him crazy thinking about it, he had just as much time as them. 

And he _would_ find his family.

Elliott stepped back onto the elevator and was surprised to see Bloodhound in there, stroking their raven’s feathers and giving him a courteous nod of their head when he stood by their side. He was tempted to ask them what they were up to, but didn’t want to be asked that same question in return. He’d already been given enough sad looks.

But Bloodhound answered his unasked question anyways:

“I was taking a basket-weaving class.”

“Oh,” Elliott said stupidly, and tried to imagine the other’s masked head bent over their delicate work while their raven helpfully brought them strips of bamboo. “Uh. To the death?”

He swore he could hear a smile in their voice, but it was hard to tell with the mask. “Yes. You will be happy to know that I survived.”

They waited quietly for their floor, and Elliott felt it again–that connection. That invisible force that linked them together somehow. He didn’t know how to put it into words, or if Bloodhound felt it too, but all too soon the elevator doors opened up and they parted ways. Elliott watched them disappear into their room, and gave a quiet sigh. One day he’d stop being a coward and ask them one of the million questions he had in his head. But..they made him feel so _weird_ and tongue-tied, even if he was infamous for _never shutting up, ever._

He had pulled out his runestone to unlock his door when a voice said,

“ _Yah._ You.”

Oh, crap.

Turning his head slowly, he saw Taejoon Park standing right outside Octavio’s door, a fist frozen in midair. He had clearly been about to knock, but had stopped when he noticed Elliott, who had been avoiding floor one hundred fifty-four for this exact reason, but it seemed that would mean nothing. He was now about to die outside his own door.

“Yeah, me,” Elliott said, because he was stupid, and Taejoon’s eyes narrowed. It was just the two of them in the vast hallway, several feet apart from one another, but Elliott felt a little claustrophobic when he looked into the other’s eyes. Those eyes seemed _so angry,_ all the time, and they always seemed to find him in a crowd. Like they were _looking_ for him specifically.

“Mila Alexander.”

Elliott blinked, taken aback. 

“What.”

Taejoon was still staring at him, but something had changed. His face had slackened the slightest bit and his eyes darted to the ground, as if realizing something for the first time. He then visibly steeled himself, and turned away from Elliott.

“Nothing,” Taejoon said, giving Octavio’s door three sharp knocks. “I was mistaken.”

“Right,” Elliott said, hastily unlocking his door in case the other changed his mind and decided to kill him after all. “Well. Uh. Good night. You crazy kids don’t get up to too much trouble, alright?”

Taejoon shot him a murderous glance right as Elliott shut his door behind him. Oh thank Thor. Good thing he was the only one who could enter his roo-

“Special delivery.”

“HOW,” Elliott shrieked, spinning around, and seeing Wraith sitting on his bed with a laptop in her hands. He tried calming himself down, but his voice was still considerably high-pitched. “ _How_ do you do that?”

“Special Valkyrie perks,” she answered very unhelpfully. “You placed an order for a laptop a couple of weeks ago. I got you one.”

“Oh.” Elliott blinked. He had honestly forgotten about that, what with all the dying and wolves and hallway-hopping. “Thanks?”

She handed it to him, and he didn’t know if it was because he hadn’t seen her in two weeks or what, but she seemed smaller and more tired than usual. He took it from her, staring at her dark circles and messy hair, and had half a mind to bring up the dream he’d had about her several days ago. These two weeks without seeing her had just stoked the fire in him that longed for more information, the need to know why the hell he was here, but before he could even open his mouth, she was saying,

“You aren’t allowed to contact anyone in Midgard, the human world. You’re supposed to be dead, after all, and it would cause too much confusion if a dead person suddenly started sending people emails.”

“Right,” Elliott said, snapping his mouth shut. His questions would have to wait for later. He looked down at the laptop, which was large, silver, and a little clunky, but at least it didn’t look like it ran on Windows 94.

Elliott set up the laptop while Wraith watched silently, standing behind him and occasionally saying things like “your password is too predictable” and “I watched you die yesterday and it was really embarrassing”. He really wished she wouldn’t do that.

Everything on the computer seemed to be regular mortal stuff, except for a desktop app called ODINOTES with a little icon of a blue eye above it. He hovered over it, confused, before looking at his Valkyrie.

“That’s for when Odin does PowerPoint presentations,” Wraith said. She had taken out her kunai again and was spinning it in her hand. “In case someone misses out on one, he uploads them to Odinotes.”

“Odin does PowerPoints?”

“Amongst other things.”

Figuring he didn’t want to know, Elliott moved to connect to the wifi, but realized he didn’t know the password. His cursor hovered over HALL_69 as he tried to think of what it would be, but nothing came to mind. He looked over at Wraith, who shrugged in return, and he gave a groan. _Great._ He had a laptop now, but no WiFi. This was nearly as useless as-

_The mirror!_

He remembered now! The password was in the mirror, and the password was...

“Hoedin?” Wraith said. “Are you stu-?”

The WiFi connected. Wraith clenched her fist.

“Silva,” she said through gritted teeth.

Elliott wanted to sign into his social media to see if anyone had made him a Facebook memorial or something special for his death, but he knew they probably hadn’t, and Wraith would probably judo-flip him if she thought he was going to make contact with Midgard. He logged onto his email, giving it all a cursory glance-over before sighing. This was useless. What did he even need this laptop for if he was forbidden from making contact with the outside world? Valhalla-assigned essays? 

“Wait,” Wraith said before he could log off, and she got closer to him, leaning over his shoulder and touching the screen. “Look at that.”

It was a message he had regarded as junkmail at first, but upon closer inspection, the subject said **‘WEAPON REQUEST FULFILLED.’**

“Open it,” Wraith said, and he did.

**_Bonjour!_ **

**_Your weapon is ready! It was a little difficult, but I think I managed to do it with all the perks you asked for. When you’re ready, please come pick it up before March ends. If you don’t, I will have it destroyed._ **

**_ALSO: I have received threats from a man called CRYPTO who says if I give you this weapon, I will be dearly sorry. Please hurry. He has given my computer a virus and I don’t know how to fix it, so I need to close up shop right away and get it fixed in Midgard, but I can’t do so while I have a weapon inside._ **

**_Merci for your patience!_ **

**_-Natalie Paquette_ **

“Uh,” Elliott said, bewildered. That was. A lot of information to take in. Who the hell was Crypto? Natalie Paquette? What weapon request? Did they not have Geek Squad in Valhalla? “What is this?”

He looked back at Wraith, whose arms were crossed over her chest. There was a weird expression on her face–a mixture of grim acceptance and triumphancy.

“Looks like you need to take a visit to Nidavellir,” she said, and took her kunai and cut a portal open in the middle of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW THIS CHAPTER IS RLY LONG. im so sorry. i was aiming for only 2 or 3 chapters but im having way too much fun writing this au. idk how many chapters it will be. maybe 5 at max. thank you for ur patience!
> 
> also in this au octavio lost his legs rly young in like a car crash or smth cuz i couldnt think of an equivalent to Grenades
> 
> [*puts my octane is partly japanese headcanon in here*](https://seerofmike.tumblr.com/post/189383167579/mixed-race-octane-headcanon) you WILL listen to me 🔫


	3. Chapter 3

“I am _not_ going through that,” Elliott said, eyeing the rift in reality that had appeared. He could see large green leaves through the crack in the air, swaying branches and braying animals. It was kind of freaking him out. “Also, what the hell is Nidavellir?”

“One of the Nine Worlds,” Wraith said. She stepped in front of the portal, casting him a glance. “Don’t you want to know who sent a weapons request on your behalf?”

“Not really.”

She smiled, a tight pull of her lips that probably pained her. “What if it was your mother?”

Oh, that was dirty. _And_ improbable. But now that the idea had been brought up, he couldn’t get it out of his head. What if it _had_ been his mother who sent in the weapons request? She had given him the magic mirror right before their home had gone up in flames, had always somehow known where he was hiding in meerkat form. She always seemed to plan ahead and know what was coming...what if this was one of those times?

“That was low,” Elliott said, closing the laptop and setting it aside. “Alright, I’m coming.”

Wraith jumped through the portal and landed on a branch, which was so wide it could fit a whole football team onto it comfortably. She beckoned for him to follow and he swallowed nervously, looking at the vast stretch of leaves before him. He hopped through the portal, feeling stupid, and landed on solid wood. The branches were so large and thick that they didn’t even react to having two fully grown human beings on them. They didn’t sway or tremble or move at all, and he was thankful for that, because if they did move he would have jumped right back through the portal and thrown up.

_YAP!_

He was gonna throw up anyways.

“Why,” Elliott began as Wraith grabbed his forearm and led him along the branch. “Is there a voice in my head calling me an _‘ugly-ass noodle head’_?”

“That’s the squirrel,” Wraith said calmly, and Elliott was reminded of the dream-not-dream he had about Helgi's office. “I don’t hear him, but don’t take his words to heart. He’s just like that.”

“Cool,” Elliott said as the squirrel continued barking, so deafeningly loud his ears were starting to ring. “I guess I won’t freak out about the giant squirrel that’s about to eat us.”

“Ratatoskr doesn’t eat humans, calm down.”

“It has a name?”

“Ratatoskr.”

Yeah, Elliott was not going to be able to pronounce that. He glanced up, searching for any signs of life, and saw in the distant branches miles above him, the red bushy tail of a squirrel the size of Ohio. It’s eyes were narrowed with so much hate he was surprised he hadn’t been burned to a crisp by its heated gaze yet. It’s front teeth were so large they could cleanly bite Elliott’s body in half like a pocky stick. It was terrifying, so of course Elliott thought to himself, _I’ll just call you Ratatouille instead._

 _YAP!_ Ratatouille screamed in response, and his head was filled with more horrible, awful words.

_It’s your fault your mom died._

_Everybody thinks you’re a joke._

_Your nose is too big._

_Nobody will miss you when you die. You mean nothing to no one._

Wraith tugged his arm, and he jumped down onto a lower branch with her, trying to ignore the voice in his head that was making every little insecurity he’d been feeling for the past decade weigh on his shoulders. The squirrel barked again and even more thoughts rose to the surface–memories of every fight he got into with his brothers, memories of all the times he'd spent in the back of an NYPD car...they probably abandoned him on purpose...who would want such a troublemaker as their family member?...who would want the burden of a kid who turned into a meerkat when he was scared and got into trouble with the police more times than they could count...?

He pictured his mother holding Chops tight to her chest, watching him flee their family home that night. He imagined her smiling and thinking to herself, _good riddance,_ as flames consumed the air around her. Even death was preferable over a child like him.

“Don’t think about it too hard, Elliott,” Wraith said, and he snapped back to reality, blinking the tears out of his eyes as the squirrel got closer, leaping from branch to branch and baring its ugly yellow teeth. “He carries insults because he wants to destroy all Nine Worlds. He chews on Yggdrasil and carries insults between the serpent at the bottom and the hawk at the top. He wants us to fall.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t hear him,” Elliott said, and his voice cracked a little. His mother had probably abandoned him. What good did he ever do for her? All he did was get in trouble, spend her money, eat her food. He lived in her attic for so long she was probably _waiting_ for the moment she could burn the house down and cut off all ties with him at once. 

They nearly ran into a normal-sized reindeer that gave them a baleful look before cantering away, and Elliott was reminded that other animals resided in Yggdrasil too. Hopefully none of them talked shit like Ratatouille did, because his hands were starting to shake and he felt himself getting closer to hyperventilating with every word the little voice in his head told him.

Finally Wraith stopped abruptly, throwing her arm out to keep him from toppling over a crack in one of the branches, fingers clenching in his shirt. He didn’t know if it was possible for branches to have cracks in them, but this one certainly did. In fact, it didn’t even look like a crack. It was a foot wide and showed him the top of several tall buildings, shrouded in moonlit darkness.

“Here we go,” Wraith said. “Mind your head.”

She jumped right into the crack, her green scarf flapping behind her before whipping around a corner. He peered down, hoping to see if she had landed safely on the rooftops, but didn’t see any sign of her. Had she fallen too far down? Had she broken her neck? Was she dead? Did Valkyries revive the same way einherjar did?

Elliott had several reasons why he did not want to jump through this branch and land in a different world, but quite frankly, those reasons were all outweighed by the fact that Ratatouille was now on the branch above him, gnashing his teeth and screaming in his head, _GET BACK HERE YOU WORTHLESS MAGGOT._

So Elliott took a deep breath like he was about to dive into the deep end, and jumped.

Rocketing through the dark air was scarier than he would ever admit. He would also never admit to screaming at the top of his lungs, flailing his limbs wildly as he rocketed towards the rooftop of a building. Oh god he was gonna die, oh god oh god oh god. It didn't even matter it he would regenerate later–splatting on the ground did _not_ seem pleasant.

He tumbled through the air, squeezing his eyes shut and starting to murmur to himself. Illusion magic had always been his strong suit, but in rare moments of pure terror, he’d managed to achieve just a _bit_ more than that. Tears streaming down his face and freezing in the rushing air, Elliott thought to himself desperately, _please don’t turn me into a puddle of goo, please let me land safely, please please please._

A strong gust of wind suddenly hit him from the side and he twisted midair, crying out and accidentally swallowing a bug in the process. With an explosion of pain and also smells, Elliott finally landed.

He was hurt, but not too badly, because he was lying on top of something soft, and also damp. Blinking his eyes open hazily, Elliott looked up at the sky, which didn’t really look much like a sky, for some reason. It was dark, cloudy, and almost solid. God, he had a headache. And what the hell was he laying on?

Realizing there was a short wall up beside him, he braced his hand against it, pushing, and nearly retracted it in fear when a cool voice suddenly said, “Trash capacity full. Initiating clearance.“

Thank the gods Elliott had braced his limbs against the walls surrounding him, because the soft substance he was lying on suddenly fell away with a loud clanging metal noise, like a pair of heavy doors had just been opened. His knees buckled a little at the sudden effort of keeping up his weight, his sweaty hands pushing against either side of the walls beside him in panic.

“WRAITH,” Elliott screamed, managing to keep himself aloft through sheer strength alone, strength he certainly never had in his mortal life. He didn't want to look behind him in case he fell to his death, but the not-really-a-sky wasn't all that nice to look at either. It was making him feel claustrophobic on top of all his panic. His feet were also slipping against the metal surface of the walls, and he knew that, at any second, he would lose his grip and fall to his death.

A hand suddenly grabbed the front of his shirt, and he was yanked out of the container he was in, thrown onto the ground with a short grunt from a familiar voice.

“I leave you alone for five minutes,“ Wraith said, sounding annoyed. “And you get lost inside a dumpster.“

“That was a dumpster?“ Elliott cried, scrambling to his feet and looking down at his person. It seemed that no trash was stuck to his body, but the smell was undeniable. “Who the hell makes a dumpster a deathtrap?“

“That's the way things are in Nidavellir,“ she said, and gestured to the dumpster. Despite the fact that it was, well, a dumpster, it was also the nicest dumpster Elliott had ever seen in his life. It seemed to be carved ornately, perhaps made out of copper or bronze, and had a certain glow to it in the darkness. It sat against the brick building innocuously, like it hadn't just tried to eat Elliott, and he gave it a wide berth when Wraith turned on her heel and headed down the street.

The air in Nidavellir was chilly, and despite the fact that he knew he was in a different world, everything seemed surprisingly familiar. Tall clapboard houses lined the streets, too close to the narrow sidewalks for comfort. No natural light seemed to come from the sky–their path was instead illuminated by the occasional streetlight and bright neon signs advertising pubs and night cafés. What Elliott had mistaken for moonlight earlier was actually glowing moss that lined the ground and climbed up the sides of buildings. It was like walking down a Boston street, only somehow more gloomy, and also inside a cave. 

“So, uh, who is this Natasha-”

“Natalie.”

“Natalie Baguette?”

Wraith shot him a look of annoyance, which made him a bit scared that she would stick her kunai in him. Even if she was more than half a foot shorter than him. Thankfully though, she focused her pale gaze ahead of her, effectively disregarding him.

“Old friend,” was all she said. “Not likely to kill us.”

“Oh, cool,” Elliott said. “I’d be worried if it was an old friend who was likely to kill us.”

“Well, there’s no need to visit Thor at the moment,” Wraith responded. Elliott couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, and he was saved from asking when she stopped abruptly in front of a tall building and said, “This is us.”

It was three stories high, brown bricked and with terraces on each floor. Each level had a different shop, from _BLITZEN’S BEST_ at the top to _SLASH ‘N SMASH_ at the bottom. Tucked snugly in the middle of both was a shop named _PAQUETTE WEAPONRY._ Scrawled in tiny cursive beneath the shop name was _(+ ASSORTED KNICKNACKS)_. There was a sign in the window that cheerfully declared that they were open. Also in the window was a cat poster that said _HANG IN THERE!_

All in all, Elliott felt a lot of different emotions at once, and couldn’t put any of them into words, something that was becoming much more common these days. Why. _Why_ did this weapons shop have a cat poster. _Why._

“No use standing around,” Wraith murmured quietly, climbing up the stairs and ignoring his open-mouthed staring. “Let’s get this over with.”

Elliott followed closely behind, entering the shop right behind her and trying not to appear too dumbfounded. The first thing he saw was a large chalkboard, situated behind a cash register, and it seemed to list the shop prices. It looked something like a menu:

**STANDARD SWORDS: 95 RED GOLD**

**STANDARD AXES (1 HANDED): 100 RED GOLD**

**STANDARD AXES (2 HANDED): 150 RED GOLD**

**ENCHANTED WEAPONS: 400 RED GOLD**

**CUSTOM SNOWGLOBE: 1000 RED GOLD**

For a weapons shop, it was also strangely devoid of weapons, but a lot of random assorted knicknacks were placed on the shelves. Lucky cats, snowglobes, glass animals, the like. It looked like one of the many tourist shops back in New York, though instead of _I <3 NY _shirts, they instead said _I <3 NV. _

He was about to ask why the snowglobes cost more than magical items when a yellow blur shot out from behind the counter and said excitedly, “ _Wraith!_ ”

A young woman of about average height stood before them, hands clasped together and mouth smiling wide. Despite the excitement in her face, she stood a few respectful feet away from them both, dressed in overalls and a grease-stained t-shirt. She had a short, choppy blonde bob, electric blue eyes, and a faint red scar on the left side of her face that resembled an explosion.

“Ah. Natalie,” Wraith said, and Elliott’s head whipped around to look at her, because she sounded _weird._ Her face was much paler than usual, opaque gaze fixed on some point over Natalie’s shoulder. “You’re. Looking nice.”

Nice was a bit of a stretch. She was pretty, yes, but also looked (and smelled) like she’d spent the better part of the day beneath a car. Natalie beamed anyways, still staring right at Wraith’s face, who averted her own gaze and glared daggers at a cluster of mini plastic flamingos.

“Anyways. This is my new chosen one.”

“Hello!” Natalie said, shifting her attention to Elliott, though her eyes never quite met his own–they focused somewhere on his chin. She bowed her head a little to him. “I am Natalie, daughter of Giselle.”

“Hi,” Elliott said, a little awkwardly. He decided to mimic her, bowing his head as well. “I’m Elliott, son of L-”

“Svartalves are matrilineal,” Wraith hissed to him quietly.

“-Evelyn,” Elliott corrected himself. “Also, did you just call her a fart elf?”

“ _Svartalf_.” Wraith rolled her eyes, and Elliott didn't think that word was any better. “Dark elf. She’s a _dwarf_. Nidavellir is the home of the dwarves, Witt.”

Elliott knew that, theoretically, dwarves and elves existed. He’d gotten a quick run-down of them from Ajay when he had refused to take a _NORSE MYTHOLOGY TO THE DEATH!_ class, and he might have gotten a bit stereotypical about it. He’d been picturing elves as tall, willowy and blonde, and dwarves as stout and bearded. Like Legolas and Gimli. Natalie had blonde hair, but otherwise looked nothing like he’d been imagining, nor dark, like _‘dark elf’_ implied.

Maybe he should have taken that Norse mythology class after all.

“Elliott Witt,” Natalie said, bowing her head again. She spoke to the floor. “I have been waiting for you, mon ami. If you would follow me, I have Gildr ready for you.”

Elliott shot a quick glance towards Wraith, but she had her back to him, staring at a row of neatly arranged snowglobes. He could see her reflection in one of them–her eyes were unblinking, and yet not as pale as usual. They had darkened into a more natural-looking blue, and he would have asked her what was up had Natalie not beckoned for him to follow her through a door behind the counter.

The room she lead him through was cluttered and hot. A dark stone object in the middle of it resembled a well, though bright hot coals burned inside. Sheets of metal and ingots rested in an orderly fashion on the numerous tables, along with a lot of tools Elliott recognized by appearance but didn’t know by name. Despite the amount of metal inside, there were no weapons. No daggers hanging from the walls, or half-finished warhammers on the tables. For a weaponry, there was a rather distinct lack of...well, weapons.

“I cannot leave the shop while weapons remain inside,” Natalie said, and he jerked, giving her a wide-eyed stare. “Oh, do not worry, I cannot read minds, but this is a question I am often asked. I only make weapons when requested. This is how my papa designed it. It is a safety matter.”

“Sorry to keep you cooped up in here for so long, then,” Elliott said awkwardly. 

“No harm done. I suppose you had a lot of settling to do once you died.” Her mouth curled a little, and she carefully pulled something from beneath a pile of cloth. It was a sword–or not.

Was it long enough to be a sword? Elliott had been around so many weapons recently that he was now able to identify even obscure ones, though this one was a bit hard to name. It was longer than a knife, but shorter than a sword. It glittered, as if made of gold, and several familiar runes were engraved on one side of the blade. There were carvings on the hilt, and upon closer inspection, they were hawks. After weeks of looking at nothing but wolf and raven art, a hawk was a nice change of pace.

“Gildr,” Natalie said, and he reached a hand out expectantly to take it. She finally looked up at him, truly, with her nose snubbed. “Wait. I need to tell you its history.”

“Oh” Elliott said, letting his hand drop. Maybe it was a dwarf thing. Or a weaponmaster thing in general.

Natalie smiled. “No harm done. Every item made in Nidavellir needs its history and culture explained.”

Elliott wondered if the dumpster from earlier would have not tried to eat him if he asked it for its complete history.

“This is Gildr,” Natalie began in a serious voice, different from the more girlish composure of her normal voice. “Companion to Arfr, crafted by Evelyn Wiitt, forged in New York with celestial bronze and bone steel. Enchanted by Natalie Paquette, and to be wielded by Elliott Witt and Elliott Witt’s essences.”

She finally held it out to him, but Elliott was too stunned to take it. His mind was reeling: his mom had made this not-sword? If this was Gildr, what was Arfr? What the hell was bone steel? What were Elliott Witt essences and why did they sound so disgusting?

“My mom made this?” Elliott asked in a weak voice, and he saw Natalie’s eyes flit to his chin before focusing on the floor. “She gave it to you?”

“She did not,” she answered in a sad voice, one laced with pity. “You see, as a dwarf, a craftswoman, I am able to tell an item’s history. This showed up on my doorstep several weeks ago, and all I can tell you is that it was crafted by Evelyn Witt. She gifted it its name, too, but despite this, it is not complete. That is how I was able to add the enchantments requested.”

She placed Gildr in the hand he hadn’t realized he’d raised. It was lighter than he expected, and the grip felt natural, perfectly catered for him. His fingers curled around the carved hawks, and he stared at his reflection in the blade’s shiny surface.

“Even now, this blade is not complete,” Natalie said with a bow of her head. She stepped away from him, hands clasped in front of her chest in what was almost a nervous gesture. “It will only be finished when it is united with Arfr.”

“What is Arfr?” Elliott asked desperately, his limited knowledge of Norse coming to bite him in the ass. “And who made the requests in the first place?”

“I don’t know. It was placed outside my shop with a set of instructions, and shortly after I began enchantment I received threats from a person calling themselves Crypto. Quite frankly, Mr. Witt, I wish to part with the weapon as soon as possible.”

“Right. Sorry,” Elliott said, feeling bad. He hadn’t meant to drill her, and glanced nervously at Gildr, trying to figure out what to do with it. Natalie came to his rescue, even if she was still staring resolutely at the floor.

“It turns into a runestone,” she said, and he glanced up at her. “Just ask it.”

“Okay,” he said, and, feeling stupid, spoke to the blade politely: “Hey, buddy, Gildr pal. Mind turning into a rock for me?”

Gildr gave a displeased hum, but obliged anyways, and he pocketed the rune into his pocket. Oh god, he hoped he didn’t lose it. “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you make it if you got threatened?”

Natalie lead him out of the room, back behind the counter and into the main shop, where Wraith was still staring at snow globes. “My father and I have always made weapons no matter the risk. The email claimed you would use Gildr to aid in Loki’s escape, but that’s impossible. No weapon is sharp enough to break his bonds. Anyways, that will be four hundred red gold. Merci.”

Elliott started to panic. “I don’t have money.”

“I do,” Wraith said before he could embarrass himself any more than usual. She tossed a small leather pouch onto the counter, and Natalie seemed satisfied without even bothering to check if Wraith needed change or something. In fact, Natalie didn’t even notice the leather pouch: her eyes were too busy staring right at Wraith’s face, her lips curled up in a big smile. Wraith seemed to be purposely ignoring it, pale expression grim. “How much is this?”

She pointed at a snowglobe with a little tent and a campfire inside. The base was a solid black color, and the clear ball seemed to glow in the dim light of the shop. Definitely not worth the thousand red gold, but Natalie smiled and said, “It’s on the house, mon ami.”

She picked it up for Wraith and said, “Campfire Globe, crafted by Natalie Paquette. Guarantees comfort and safety wherever you go. Made with–with love.”

She blushed at the last part, and Wraith accepted the item without much fuss, though she did smile the slightest bit. Her eyes were a dark blue, and it was unsettling to him. “Thanks.”

Wraith then jerked her head to the door, hiding the globe in her scarf. “Let’s go, Elliott.”

Elliott, who had been watching the whole exchange with his mouth wide open (attracting flies, Chris used to say) followed after her hastily, dipping his head briefly in Natalie’s direction in place of a goodbye. Wraith had already slid down the stairs, walking fast down the middle of the street, and he jumped down a few steps before climbing over the railing and dropping down onto the sidewalk. “Hey, wait up!”

He jogged to catch up with her, extremely aware of the runestone in his pocket thumping against his thigh. Wraith didn't look at him, though he could tell that some time between the shop and the street her eyes had paled again.

"You _like_ her, don’t you?”

“Shut up,” she grumbled.

“And she likes you back!”

“I’m not afraid of dumping you in Jotunheim,” Wraith threatened, eyes blazing, but Elliott didn’t feel as scared of her as he had earlier. On the contrary he giggled loudly, somehow amazed that Wraith, his stone cold Valkyrie, could do something as human as have a crush.

“You two would be cute together,” Elliott said, because he didn’t fear death anymore, not even in this cold and gloomy mockery of Boston. Wraith stopped abruptly in the middle of the street, and he nearly toppled her over in surprise. Blinking, he stared at the back of her head, taking note of her stiff shoulders and stifled breath.

“We can’t be together,” she said softly after a long while, and for the first time, Elliott felt a pang in his chest for his Valkyrie. He wouldn’t call them friends–he was too afraid of her for that–but for the first time since coming to Valhalla, he regarded Wraith as an actual human person, and not just the lady who dragged him to this Viking afterlife.

“Why?” He asked, trying his best to be quiet, but his voice seemed to echo down the empty street anyways.

“I’m on a mission,” Wraith said, and he saw her clench her fists, controlled anger in her posture. “I don’t have time for–for her. For anyone. I need my memories back, first and foremost.”

Elliott’s stomach churned a little at that. “How does bringing people to V-V-Valhalla get your memories back?”

“...Odin promised me.”

Before Elliott could ask her any one of the millions of questions that had popped into his head, clawing at his throat, she pulled her kunai from the depths of her scarf and cut through the air, movements sharp. Tree branches swayed distantly in the middle of the street, and she turned to him.

“Maybe instead of thinking about my love life, you should figure out what that sword is for. Who sent it. Who Crypto is.” She fixed her piercing gaze on him, and he couldn’t speak. She then grabbed him by his shirt for the third time that night, and yanked him through the portal.

* * *

“Sick sword, dude,” Octavio said in awe around a mouthful of enchilada. It was lunch time, right after the daily slaughter, and his hallmates of floor sixty-nine had seen Gildr for the first time after it had spent its first three days in Elliott’s possession discarded on his nightdesk in runestone form. He’d finally brought it to fight, and promptly died a minute later, but at least had managed to cut off somebody’s ear, and his hallmates had seemed astounded by its appearance.

Octavio, Ajay, Bloodhound, and Taejoon freaking Park were all staring at his brand new shiny toy, gathered in the lounge and eating together. Because that was the new thing, apparently. Octavio and Taejoon were _together_ now, and he did not trust it one bit. He kept expecting Taejoon to stab him so he could bleed out over the chips and salsa, or at least use the excuse of visiting floor sixty-nine to draw a dick on Elliott’s door or something, but he had been surprisingly docile recently. He wasn’t even actively seeking Elliott out on the battlefield anymore. He still did ruthlessly murder him if he stumbled upon Elliott, but most of the time just did weird things like _smile_ at Octavio and hold his hand. Elliott almost wished he'd just kill him again.

Taejoon was currently staring at Gildr, lip curled up in a light snarl. He seemed to hate the blade, and looked two seconds away from knocking it out of Elliott's hand, though the expression passed when Octavio nudged him with his elbow and said, “Didn’t you say you wanted to go to Nidavellir the other day?”

“Not anymore,” Taejoon said, and turned his attention to his own enchilada (half of which had been stolen by Octavio). “My business there exists no longer.”

“Oh,” the other said, clearly disappointed. “I wanted to visit Nat.”

“You know Natalie?” Elliott asked, surprised.

“‘Course we know Natalie,” Ajay said. She had finished eating already, and was polishing her shield. “She and her papa designed a good bit of Valhalla’s security. We have electric fences set up in case anything tries to invade.”

That did not seem very magical or very Viking-like, but Elliott wouldn’t know, having still chosen to avoid _NORSE MYTHOLOGY TO THE DEATH!._ He looked at his own reflection in Gildr’s blade, seeing his own face scrunched up in confusion. It looked like that a lot, recently. With a sigh, he willed it into stone form, and Octavio promptly spat out his food.

“Do that again!” He said excitedly.

“Gross,” Taejoon, raising a napkin to his boyfriend’s chin.

They were both sickening to watch, so Elliott finished up his enchilada as quickly as possible before excusing himself, intent on scouring the floors again for any sign of his brothers–and his mother. The possibility that she had sent that weapon request as soon as he got into Valhalla had been haunting him for the past few days...what if she was _here?_ He didn’t know what happened in that fire that night. He knew he heard the howling of wolves in the distance...what if she had died in a similar way to him? What if she knew he was here?

( _But why won't she come find me?_ a little voice inside him begged, desperate. _Mom, where are you?_ )

He was just getting into the elevator when the spear-gridded doors stuttered for a moment, before opening up again and allowing Bloodhound to step inside. Elliott shuffled closer to the wall, giving them more room. They had been quiet during the whole lunch time, and he wondered what they were thinking about. They were wearing the gear they’d worn when they met for the very first time, though their raven was nowhere in sight.

He wondered about that bird, and what it meant to Bloodhound. He wondered about a lot of things about Bloodhound: where they came from, how they learned to fight, what their death was like. Maybe the last bit was a morbid question, but after weeks of viewing other honorable deaths, he was curious. Who wouldn’t be? He knew how Octavio and Ajay died, how Taejoon had died, but Bloodhound was a mystery to him. He hadn’t even seen them without their mask yet, though they said they didn’t wear it _all_ the time. Maybe they didn't trust him. Maybe they didn't want him to see them.

The elevator doors slid shut, and Elliott realized he hadn’t picked a floor yet. Neither had Bloodhound. Glancing at them out of the corner of his eye, he saw that they were full on staring at him, mask turned towards him. Swallowing nervously, he asked, “What’s up?”

“Gildr,” they said in their filtered voice, and Elliott heard the curiosity within it. “What is its full potential?”

Elliott’s fingers tightened instinctively around the little rock inside his pocket. He didn't really know the answer to that question either, but he felt a slurry of words bubble in his throat anyways.

“The thing is, I don’t really know. I mean, it’s supposed to be paired up with something else, but I don’t know what, but I do really want to know who requested it, b-b-because they knew my mom, I think, but I don’t know if she’s still alive or what, and I really want to f-find out, but first I have to figure out what Af...Alf....Alfr...whatever A-R-F-R is but even if I do what's the point because I suck at fighting but if I don't use this thing I'm gonna feel bad because for all I know this was something my mom made to help me and I'm just discarding it without even trying."

He took a deep breath, feeling his cheeks flush, embarrassed because he had not meant to let all of that spill, especially in front of Bloodhound. He had been anxious to vent all of that to Octavio and Ajay, but could never find the right time. He wanted to ask them, _have you ever seen a tall lady around here? Curly hair, scar on her lip, really nice and also super buff? She’s my mom and I miss her._ But he didn’t want them to laugh at him or pity him. He also didn’t want them to squash the small amount of hope he has been desperately clinging to.

Thankfully, Bloodhound didn’t laugh at him, or even seem pitying. On the contrary, they cocked their head to the side, and said, “I could help you.”

Elliott’s brain slowed to a halt at those words. “What.”

“With Gildr,” they said, nodding their head to where his fingers were still curled around the runestone. “To find its true potential. And yours.”

“Are you gonna. Like. Be my Yoda?” Elliott asked, and then cursed himself for being SO fucking stupid. He kept speaking anyways, because he had no filter. “Like, my Jedimaster?”

“Yes,” they said. “Be your Yoda, I will.”

The elevator doors slid open–Octavio and Ajay stood there, arguing over something, and Bloodhound stepped back out, leaving Elliott staring after them, mouth gaping open. Did they just..? They didn't. He was hearing things. There was _no way..._

“My room tomorrow,” they said, and he swore he heard a laugh in their voice as they whistled for their bird to come down from the rafters.

* * *

Training with Bloodhound was...well. It was something else. 

Their room was weird. They had a large hammock hanging in the very middle of it, and the room had a wide-open floorplan, rather than the four sections like Elliott's had. Their walls were covered in animal hides, skulls and candles decorated their shelves, and every single mask they owned glared at him judgmentally from a goddamned _hat rack_ next to their door. They had a few personal touches in the shape of magazines and a fucking Playstayion 4, but aside from that, he felt very much like they lived comfortably in the middle of the wilderness.

One week passed for Elliott in nervousness, standing in the middle of their room, clenching Gildr tightly in his fist while they struck blow after blow, swatting him on his head with the blunt end of their spear or slicing his skin lightly with one of their many knives. He tried to deflect, or do something _useful,_ but he lost every single fight the two of them had, falling onto his ass after swinging Gildr around uselessly, but Bloodhound always pulled him to his feet. Always had encouraging words to say– “Again. You vill vinna, one day.”

The second week passed in much the same fashion. He achieved nothing, got his ass beat a bunch of times, and finally did one useful thing towards the end of the week when he thought to himself, _hey, why don’t I use bamboozles?_ He’d managed to fool Bloodhound for about three seconds–their knife stabbed through his decoy’s chest, and it fizzled out of existence. He saw the way their posture turned momentarily off-kilter, stunned, before they turned their head towards him and immediately threw the knife at him.

They didn’t seem to mind that he wasn’t making too much progress as weeks three and four passed. They kept at it, kept telling him he would get the hang of it, that starting late was better than starting never.

Octavio sometimes joined their training sessions to shout encouraging words, mostly “Kick his ass, Bloodhound!” and “No mercy! Kill him already!” Ajay usually dragged him out, or he ran off by himself to hang out with Taejoon. Elliott had borrowed his knives some of the times he came over, and he was just as shit with them as he was with Gildr. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this fighting schtick, after all.

(Bloodhound wouldn't hear it. He'd started the self-deprecating sentence, staring down at the way he had accidentally cut his finger with Octavio's knife, but before he could get two words out, Gildr was being shoved into his arms. _Try, try again._ )

Wraith visited him in the midst of his fifth week training with Bloodhound. He felt unusually triumphant: he had managed to lop off their arm, and after his shrieks and “I’M SORRY”’s had died down, they assured him it would grow back in about seven hours. They then ushered him out the door while he babbled out more apologies.

“It is fine, Elliott,” they had said, and he truly believed it, because they didn’t sound angry at all. They actually sounded rather proud. “You’re building your own path, now.”

Wraith dropped out from one of her portals, landing on top of his bed. Her hair looked worse than usual and there was a very large bloody gash on her stomach. Instantly he leaped to his feet, alarmed, knocking a few couch pillows to the floor. She had waved at him, a little limp movement of her wrist 

“I’m fine,” she said, and he didn’t believe her like he had with Bloodhound. “I’ve had a day.”

“What happened?” He asked, approaching her. Her eyes were closed, and she laid down very slowly, resting her head on his pillows. He had half a mind to yell for Ajay.

“I’m trying to get someone,” she mumbled, and her fingers came to a rest over her bloodied skin. “I’ve almost got him. I’m getting closer.”

And then she fell asleep. Elliott stared at her snoozing body, extremely confused and also concerned. He wondered if he should report this to Anita, the Valkyrie captain, and tell her that one of her own was currently bleeding out on his bed. He then just shrugged to himself and thought, if she died, she could just regenerate later. Not a big deal.

She was gone when he came back from dinner, though his bed was neatly made and she’d written a note for him in her print-perfect handwriting: _Sorry for all the blood. Also I stole one of your shirts._

(It was the one with the hot biker babe on it. He could appreciate her taste.)

Week six, Bloodhound sat on their hammock, arms crossed over their chest. They were silent for a very long time, and Elliott fidgeted a little nervously, feeling stupid holding Gildr in his hand while they did nothing. Though he felt that he had gotten to know them a bit better over these past weeks, he did feel somewhat scrutinized by them. No, that wasn’t right–he felt wary of himself. He didn’t want to be an embarrassment in front of them. He wanted to make them proud, he wanted them to praise him, and every single word of encouragement they spoke his way made his mouth quirk up at the edges and something warm pop up in his chest.

(No Elliott. You Are Still Recovering From Your Break-Up, Elliott. It Has Been Two Months, Elliott.)

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity (and Elliot thought he would soon get to know eternities very well), they said,

“Have you ever tried using your illusions to fight?”

“No,” Elliott said instantly, because the thought had occurred to him before, but didn’t seem plausible. They always fizzled away after contact. Nothing more than an afterimage. 

“Maybe you should,” Bloodhound suggested. “You have...an unusually high amount of magical energy.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“No,” Bloodhound said, and he tried not to look surprised. “Abilities passed down from our families, yes. Magic? No. It’s nearly impossible. Gods, demigods, elves, dwarves...nearly all species in the Nine Worlds do not have natural magic. It is a learned ability in the form of runes. The runes write our universe, and as such, it requires a great deal of pain and suffering to achieve.”

“Oh,” Elliott said. “I mean. My whole family is dead, if that accounts for anything.”

Bloodhound shook their head. “Even the Allfather had to hang himself from Yggdrasil after stabbing himself with his own spear. He hung for days, in pain, bleeding out and dying over and over again, just so he could suffer enough to learn the secrets of the runes, and has only been able to acquire more knowledge the more he suffers."

Now, Elliott has suffered a lot in his life, but perhaps not on the same level as hanging from a tree for like, nine days, and stabbing himself with a spear. Yowch.

“So I don’t do rune magic?” He asked, trying to make a distinction of _rune magic_ and _not rune magic._

“No,” they replied, and they turned their head away from him, staring at the skulls on their wall. They were silent for a few more moments, before continuing: “It’s jotun magic.”

Elliott blinked, and felt Gildr in his hand shrink down to a runestone. Tucking it inside his pocket, he approached Bloodhound cautiously, curiously. “Like...giant magic?”

“Yes,” they confirmed, and he remembered what they said so many days ago. They could sniff magic out, like their namesake, and he wondered just how long they’d known he had jotun magic. “Your father–Loki–is not just a god. He is a jotun, as well. You would, perhaps, have more aptitude for rune magic than someone who is not Loki’s child, but having jotun magic? As a demigod? It is unheard of, to my knowledge.”

Elliott felt an uncomfortable squirming sensation in his stomach. He remembered his first death from what seemed like forever ago, how he had dreamed about Loki putting that mark of two snakes on his tiny infant body. He wondered if that had connected them, somehow–if he was drawing his magic, his illusion, his bamboozles from his father himself. He suddenly felt sickened at the thought: his mother wouldn’t want this for him. She'd always told him to never fall into Loki's clutches.

“How do you know so much about jotun magic?” He asked, trying to keep his voice steady, but it wavered towards the end of his sentence, and he clenched his teeth tightly. _Don't think about mom._

“...Let us fight again,” Bloodhound said, avoiding his question, and he decided not to take it personally; mystery was kind of their schtick, after all. He took a deep breath before wielding Gildr again. 

“Alright, but please don’t cut off my nose again. I can still smell wolf hair from last time.”

Weeks seven and eight, Elliott actually managed to kill people during the daily battles. Of course, some of them were accidental–Taejoon was still mad that Elliott had tripped and managed to stab him right through the chest–but he actually really felt like he was improving. It certainly helped that growing accustomed to all of this Valhalla business had made him panic less, and use a tactical mind more. His decoys had successfully saved his life several times, and he’d even once managed a successful on-the-spot transformation into a meerkat to avoid getting his head cleaved in half. Only to be crushed to death by Makoa Gibraltar’s foot, but hey! He’d never done that before!

Wraith had been conspicuously absent recently. She had a rep for bringing in as many as two einherjar a month, but hadn’t shown up in a while. This was apparently relatively normal for other Valkyries–some even only brought in one newly slain a year. It was the duty of making the einherjars' afterlives the best ones possible that was the true honor for some of them, but he didn’t think that quite fit with Wraith’s character. She was just... _gone._ He hadn’t seen her since that incident on his bed.

He voiced his concerns to Bloodhound one evening, while they were trying to make him form a decoy with Gildr in its hands, but it had failed so far. Growing frustrated and on the verge of giving up, he chose to address them, sitting cross-legged on the floor and sharpening one of their many knives.

“Haven’t seen Wraith in a while,” he said.

They didn’t say anything.

“She nearly bled to death on my bed a couple of weeks ago, but I haven’t seen her since.”

Nothing.

“What if she–?”

“Wraith is capable,” Bloodhound said, lowering their knife. They regarded him, but despite the firm way they said it, Elliott didn’t feel like they were being cold or flippant about her disappearance. More like assured, or at the very least, confident in her abilities. “If she ever got into trouble, her Valkyrie wristband would transport her here instantly before death. She would survive.”

“Oh,” he mumbled, and then said, “Wait, what do you mean...death? Survive? Does she not regenerate?”

“Valkyries are not dead,” Bloodhound said. They got to their feet, brushing dirt off of their lap with careful movements. “They are chosen from the living. They do not regenerate inside Valhalla nor outside. Many of them lead normal lives outside of Valhalla. They do not age if they wish to, under the condition of permanent residence here, but they are still susceptible to death and injury.”

Elliott suddenly felt nauseous over the fact he’d just left Wraith on his bed, bleeding with a large cut in her stomach, shrugging it off as a meh, she’ll be fine later. She could have died, and he would have been responsible...what if she _did_ die? She had left his room and had enough strength to write him a note, but what if the wound had become infected? What if she had gotten sick?

"Elliott," Bloodhound said, and he felt a tiny shiver run through his body. "Do not worry. Have more faith in your comrades."

They placed their hand on his shoulder, and he looked up at them, because holy hell they were really tall, taller than him. He swallowed heavily, trying to make something out in the eyes of their mask, but could see nothing but his own slack-jawed expression in the glinting glass. He wondered if they looked as assured as they sounded beneath it.

"I want you to take a class with me," Bloodhound suddenly said, and Elliott blinked.

"What," he said.

"Norse Mythology to the death," they continued.

"...Why?"

"Because I am a little tired of having to explain things to you," they said honestly. "And Anna Björnsdóttir is teaching today."

Anna Björnsdóttir was a seventeen year old girl with long dark hair and heavy eyebrows. She had a scar over one of her eyes, which was permanently bloodshot. She stood at five feet two, wore woolly cardigans, and had an extreme fondness for knives, which Elliott found out the hard way.

She taught class for about thirty minutes, and he had allowed himself to slip into a false sense of security: nobody had died or even gotten injured so far. He and twenty other people sat in a large meeting room, sitting at comfortable desks free of graffiti while Anna did a PowerPoint presentation for them. She described the Aesir, the Vanir, and the Nine Worlds. She even gave them a coloring sheet of the goddess Sif as a fun little activity. He and Bloodhound shared crayons as Anna walked between their rows of desks, explaining the differences between Nidavellir and Svartalfheim.

And in the latter half of the class, she started asking questions.

"Bloodhound," she began in her heavy accent, and beside him, they straightened up in their seat, poised. "Describe to me the wedding between Thor and Thrym."

"Of course," they said, and Artur (Bloodhound's raven, which Elliott had learned the name of after Bloodhound shouted "No, Artur! He is not food!" when he had turned into a meerkat) gave a caw. "Thrym stole Thor's hammer and demanded that Freya marry him if he wanted it back. Thor instead dressed as a bride with Loki at his side, presenting as a woman, and they managed to get the hammer back after the ceremony."

"Correct! Ten points to Bloodhound!" Anna cried ferociously, startling the einherji in front of her. She slapped a star onto a chart that he hadn’t noticed before–all of their names were scrawled in chalk. She had misspelled his name as ELIOT. "You there! Tomas! What is the name of Loki's son, the eight-legged horse?"

"The what," Elliott whispered quietly under his breath, but went unheard. Tomas stared up at Anna with wide eyes, clearly scared of answering wrong. 

"It's Slipknot, innit?" He asked, lips trembling, and the shaking only got worse when Anna took a step back. "Wait, no, I remember, please–"

She threw a knife right between his eyes, and Tomas keeled over, dead.

"Incorrect!" Anna shouted as Elliott gave a squeak and instinctively scooted his chair back to get away from the blood pooling on the floor. "His name is _Sleipnir!_ Get your _facts_ right, or I shall feed you to the wolves!"

As if on cue, a pair of Valhalla wolves trotted across the room, clamped their jaws around Tomas's limbs, and dragged him away. Elliott shot Bloodhound a look of horror, because he hadn’t been expecting this, he truly hadn’t, but they seemed to find it amusing.

"Son of Loki!" Anna bellowed, and Elliott let out another, much less manly squeak as he jerked his head towards her. "How did Skadi come to marry Njord?"

He swore he saw Bloodhound stiffen out of the corner of his eye, but he was too busy panicking to give it much thought. "When who m-m-married who?"

"The giantess _Skadi,_ " Anna enunciated clearly, and Elliott gulped as she reached for a knife. "How did she come to marry _Njord_?"

"Uhh," Elliott said out loud, because he was really intelligent. "Did they meet in a club..?"

"Incorrect! Skadi was forced to examine the feet of several men, and she chose the most beautiful pair of feet of them all–and they happened to belong to Njord, god of sailors! Good _night,_ Elliott Witt!"

"Wait," Elliott yelled, bracing his hands up to block any oncoming knives. "Wait, this isn't fair! How was I supposed to know?!”

Anna's knife still managed to embed itself into his forehead, and he died.

He then also dreamed.

Wraith was standing with a woman he'd seen flying around the Feast Hall of the Slain–Anita, captain of the Valkyries. Wraith was holding an icepack to her face, nursing a swollen black eye, while Anita paced back and forth in front of her, hands clasped tightly behind her back. They seemed to be standing in some sort of infirmary, where other Valkyries laid on the beds or floated by watering plants.

"There's something off about him," Anita was saying, and Wraith nodded along to her words, expression grim. "He knows... _something._ He knows too much."

"Nobody can get into Valhalla on purpose," Wraith said quietly, and Anita stopped briefly to regard her before resuming her pacing. "Heroic death has to be unintentional."

"But what if he found a way?" Anita said, more to herself than anything. "He's _looking_ for something. Some _one_."

"I think you're just getting paranoid, 'Nita. He’s _your_ chosen one. Deal with him," Wraith said, lowering her ice pack and giving Elliott a good look at her face. There were bruises marring her cheek and forehead, and her eyelid was crusted with pus. He winced when she poked at the swollen skin. Despite her words, he thought that she was lying. She did believe something was up, but that wasn’t at the forefront of her mind, further proven when she changed the subject: "Odin's been quiet lately. Too quiet. I think...I think the gods are planning something."

"It's not our place to wonder what goes on in Asgard," Anita shot back. "It is our place to maintain peace in Valhalla."

"There might not be Valhalla anymore if Ragnarok starts," Wraith argued. "If Loki uses Elliott to _escape_ –"

Elliott would have choked on his own saliva if he was actually there. He’d known his whole thirty years of life that Loki would try to use Elliott to break himself out of his bonds and start Ragnarok, but hearing Wraith of all people say that made him feel...somewhat upset. Why had she brought him here if she thought he might aid in Loki’s escape?

"He won't," Anita said resolutely, drawing to her full height. She was at least a foot taller than the other Valkyrie. "The gods ensured that his bonds would be unbreakable."

"Then why have they been quiet? What are they doing if everything is supposedly fine?"

"I understand you're rushing to save the world so you can get your memories back," Anita said, and here Elliott saw it _again_ : the rage in Wraith's posture, clearly _there,_ but under her control, harnessed back to prevent her from lashing out. "But there is nothing that _needs saving._ "

“Maybe you’re wrong,” Wraith said defiantly, and he woke when a knock sounded on the infirmary door.

Elliott blinked his eyes open, staring at the ceiling of his room. He had been tucked into his bed, but he kicked the blankets off, scrambling out of it and shoved on a pair of slippers. He hadn't dreamt like this since his first death, and he was desperate to know what it all meant, and he knew at least one person would be willing to answer his questions: Bloodhound.

Rushing out into the hallway, he nearly ran right into Ajay Che, who swore loudly as she stumbled against the wall.

"Oi, watch yourself!" She said crossly. “What you running from?”

“I was just g-g-gonna see ‘Hound,” Elliott stuttered out, before frowning at her. “What are _you_ doing out?”

“Wraith was pretty banged up, asked me to heal her,” Ajay said with a shrug. “Happens sometimes. Being a daughter of Frey helps out.”

Elliott felt a surge of energy run through his body once again. He nearly grabbed Ajay by her shoulders, but held back as he asked, “Did she have a black eye?”

“Yeah,” she said, and squinted at him. “How did you know that?”

“No reason,” Elliott said, pushing past her and heading towards Bloodhound’s door. “Bye!”

So the dreams were real after all! This was proof! Loki really did put those snakes on his body, Wraith and Anita were worried that someone had snuck into Valhalla...He had to tell Bloodhound, he had to make sense of it all...

He raised a hand to pound on Bloodhound’s door, but no sooner had he rapped his knuckles against it, the door flew open and Bloodhound stood there, evidently surprised even if he couldn’t see their face.

“Ah,” they said, shaking their surprise off, almost doglike. “I was just about to look for you.”

Elliott’s excitement was close to brimming, but he calmed himself down enough to ask, “Why?”

“You left Gildr in class,” they said, and held up his runestone. “I have a guess as to what its companion is.”

“Oh?” The dream-not-dream fled from his mind, and he stared at the other expectantly. His body was still keyed up with excitement, but this time a different kind of excitement. If Bloodhound had figured out the answer to one of the questions he’d been asking himself for the past eight weeks (has it really been eight weeks?..) then the dream could wait. This was more important. This might lead him to his _mom._

“Yes,” Bloodhound hummed in affirmation. “It’s–”

A sudden cough sounded.

They both glanced around, seeing nothing or no one, before looking back at one another. Elliott’s eyebrows were furrowed, because as far as he was concerned, einherjar didn’t turn invisible, and ghosts didn’t exist, but he had no idea who made that noise.

The noise happened again, only louder this time.

They both looked down to see a raven on the ground, looking up at them.

“Oh, great,” the raven said. At least, he thought it was a raven. It looked exactly like a raven except for the fact that it very horrifyingly had green human eyes. “I’ve got a message for uhh....Bloodhound?”

Bloodhound stood very still and very quiet for a very long moment. They then raised their hand a little, as if though they were back in class, and said, “That is me.”

“Yeah, gimme a second,” the raven said, and then barfed up a pellet on the carpet. “Alright, there we go. See ya, fellas.”

It then flapped away.

“That was actually disgusting,” Elliott said when neither of them spoke for a very long time.

“Ravens usually deliver messages like that,” Bloodhound said in the raven’s defense.

“I was talking about its eyes.”

“Oh. Yes, those were reprehensible.”

They bent down, picking up the pellet in their gloved hands. They then unfolded it, because it was a tiny little scroll, apparently, and god Elliott hated Valhalla so much if this knock-off Harry Potter method of messaging was common. They smoothed the paper out against the wall before holding it up to their face, and Elliott glanced over their shoulder to read it too.

_HI HOUNDIE_

_GOT SUM STUFF 4 U_

_BRING UR BOYFRIEND_

_FAMILY REUNION <3 _

_LOVE,_

_BIG BOY XOXO_

Elliott could not think of a good reason to have the name ‘Big Boy’. Who the hell would ever call themselves Big Boy, aside from loan sharks or porn stars? Loan sharks definitely didn’t write like that, but he doubted that Bloodhound knew any porn stars. Then again, what did he even know about Bloodhound?

“Why are you getting bird barf messages from porn stars?” Elliott asked out loud, because his mouth hated him. Bloodhound crumpled the little scroll up in their fist, and when they spoke, he was surprised to hear seething anger in their voice.

“ _Loki_.”

Elliott had to bite his tongue to keep his jaw from dropping.

“What the fuck?” He asked vehemently, voice high-pitched and indignant. “My dad calls himself Big Boy? _Hello?_ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uhhhh my computer was fucking BUSTED all christmas break so i typed this whole thing on my phone....sorry if its evident i lost steam partway thru...its rly exhausting and annoying to type on my phone...thank u for making it this far! our storie draws nearer to its ending !


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait ;w;

Elliott thought he was starting to get the handle on things: he could use jotun magic, he respawned every day after dying a horrible death, ate Unidentifiable Animal for dinner, and had a magic mirror that told him WiFi passwords.

His new friends in this afterlife consisted of one young woman and her Magical Summer Healing powers and deadly drumsticks, one young man who wore crop tops into battle and was also dating Elliott’s biggest enemy, and a mysterious person and their angry bird. He went to Dwarf World and met a Dwarf Woman who didn’t look like Gimli from Lord of the Rings. 

He had a sword that could turn into a _rock._

Elliott’s weirdness tolerance level had been raised exponentially in the past three months, to the point that when he met a talking bird, he wasn’t even _that_ surprised by it. He had been more concerned by its very large, very human eyes, but talking? No sweat. Birds could do that.

One of the things he could not handle, though, was the fact that his father, god of mischief, had the nickname of Big Boy.

 _Big Boy_.

Literally disgusting. He was about to have a breakdown.

“Calm down,” Bloodhound said, placing a hand reassuringly on his shoulder while he retched dramatically. “It is not your Loki. I meant Utgard-Loki. No relation. Different Loki’s.”

“There’s more than _one?_ ” 

“Loki is a common giantish name,” Bloodhound said, and they let their hand fall back to their side. Elliott secretly mourned the loss. “But that is not the issue here...the issue is, he wants me to visit him. And he wants you to come with me.”

Elliott blinked. “The note didn’t mention me though, did it?”

Bloodhound didn’t say anything for a good minute, staring at him with their blank, empty glass eyes reflecting his own confounded expression. Finally, they said, “I read between the lines.”

“Oh. Okay. They want you to bring your boyfriend, though.” He felt a prickle in the back of his throat that was definitely not jealousy. “Who is he?”

Bloodhound just stared at him again. “There is no boyfriend.”

Elliott didn’t understand anything, so he decided to just shut up about the boyfriend bit for now. He instead focused on another pressing matter: “So why do you know a guy who calls himself Big Boy?”

“That does not matter right now,” Bloodhound said shortly, taking a step back, just out of Elliott’s reach, inside their door. “We leave tomorrow after breakfast. Good night.”

“I don’t get a say in-?”

Their door slammed in front of his face.

It opened again.

“Do not tell anyone where we are going or why,” they said, and slammed it back shut. Elliott stared at the wood for a long time, fighting back the urge to knock on it again. They’d just been about to tell him something important too, but it looked like he’d have to wait another day to receive that information. With a low groan to himself, he returned to his room, dressed into silk pajamas with HV patched over the breast pocket, and fell asleep.

* * *

"Do you know what separates the Norse from other gods, Ell?"

"Nope," Elliott said, barely looking away from the TV. They were playing _Iron Man_ on cable _,_ and after failing to see it in theaters months ago, he didn't want to miss a second of it. His homework lay in an unfinished pile next to him, but he wasn't stressed about it–it was his senior year, after all, a time for relaxation.

His mother was washing up in the kitchen, clothes greasy from working all day in the mechanic shop. Her hair was pulled up in a sweaty mess of curls and there was a smear of oil on her cheek, but she was rushing to put a casserole in the oven because Matthew was driving upstate to visit them for the first time in a while.

Life was going good. Great, even, now that two of his brothers had moved away for college and he got more of his mother's undivided attention. He was watching a movie he'd been wanting to see, was gonna eat some delicious Cajun shrimp casserole later, and see his eldest brother. He didn't want to ruin the good mood by talking about god stuff.

("One day, Loki will try to use you," he remembered his mother telling him once when he was thirteen. "I'd rather you die than be under his control."

God conversations weren't his favorite.)

His mother evidently had other plans. 

She reached for the TV remote and paused the movie, giving him a stern look when he let out a burst of protest. 

"This is serious, Elliott," his mother said, tossing the remote aside. She sat right next to him, on the very edge of the couch as to not get too much grease on it. "Tell me. What makes the Norse different?"

"They're all white," Elliott said. His mother gave him another look. "Okay, I don't know. That was my only guess."

His mother reached over and took his hand into hers, and he felt the roughness of her palms against his fingers.

"They die."

For some reason that instilled a bone-deep chill inside him: he knew his father Loki, forever in chains and bound by the innards of his own sons, was a horrible person. He was well aware that his mother was raising him as best she could so that one day, when Loki would inevitably call for him, he would be able to resist and maybe even escape...but was his mother now trying to encourage him to _kill_ Loki?

He was just a senior in high school. Just Elliott Witt, who helped his mom out in the shop and ate pork chops daily and occasionally turned into a meerkat when scared. He wasn't anybody special. He wasn't a warrior.

"Don't worry about it now," his mother said, as if reading his mind, and reached up to tuck a curl behind his ear. "But the Norse die. It is a fated event. It can be prolonged, but not stopped. The sky will fall, Fenrir Wolf will swallow the sun, and our world will drown. More importantly, your father will die."

"So like...if I kill him, all that stuff happens, or...?" Elliott swallowed, trying to wrap his head around what she was trying to tell him.

"You can't kill Loki," his mother responded. "You can only hurt him. Drain him. It's written in the stars: _you cannot kill Loki._ You can _weaken him,_ but he won't die. Not until the end of the world. But when the time comes where you have to face him, I don't want you to kill yourself trying to get to him. Just don't let him get you first."

She wrapped her arms around him, and he allowed himself to be pulled into a hug even if she smelled like exhaust gas. "But I have faith in you. I know you'll stop Ragnarok, Ell."

* * *

Elliott didn’t sleep that well, probably because he had already slept for a good amount of the day before after dying in Norse Mythology class, and when he woke up he stood in his shower for twenty-five minutes, messing with the many Hotel Valhalla shower settings as he tried to get all his thoughts in order. He particularly enjoyed one setting that filled the air with pink soap bubbles.

He then spent an awful amount of time styling his hair, even if his job was made easier for him with his perfect einherji curls. He debated on shaving despite his beard being at the perfect length, and then spent a good amount of time rifling through his closet, trying to look for comfy clothes that _didn't_ have _HV_ patched on them.

Elliott knew he was procrastinating because he was kind of scared of what he and Bloodhound would be doing today. He didn’t even actually know _what_ they were going to do today. Go to Jotunheim maybe? Utgard-Loki was presumably a jotun, and unless he resided in Boston Common, he didn’t know any other place a giant could live aside from Jotunheim. Because they were big. And mortals would see them if they _did_ live in Midgard. Probably.

Elliott did eventually hurry up in his getting ready, mostly because he was worried that Bloodhound would burst through his door with their tomahawk in hand and declare that they had to leave immediately. He made his way to the hall sixty-nine lounge, where Ajay and Octavio sat a good ten feet apart from one another.

“What’s up?” He asked by way of greeting, wondering what they were fighting about now.

“He’s being gross,” Ajay mumbled. Her pancakes were piled high with whipped cream, practically the whole can. Octavio had a bowl of fruit and yogurt. “He won’t shut up.”

When Elliott glanced at the other boy, he raised his slit eyebrows and said with a leer, “I got _laid._ ”

“Gross,” Elliott said as Ajay pretended to vomit into her food. “I didn’t want to know that.”

“It was great!” Octavio said, and Elliott for once wished Taejoon was here, because at least Taejoon would shut him the hell up before he could get more than two words out. Probably. “We found out we were into a lot of the same stuff and-”

Elliott was about to take one for the team and murder Octavio right then and there to get him to stop talking, but as he reached for Gildr he realized he still didn’t have it. Bloodhound had kept it with them.

“If you run to my room,” Ajay murmured out of the corner of her mouth as Octavio rambled on, now making obscene gestures. “And grab my sword, I can kill him before he gets to the handcuffs part."

“On it,” Elliott whispered back, and turned around only to run straight into Bloodhound with a small shriek. “Jesus!”

“Not the right religion,” they said.

“Right, sorry. By Heimdall, how do you keep sneaking up on me?”

“I wouldn’t be a very good tracker if I let my prey know I was behind them, would I?”

Elliott squinted. “Did you just call me prey?”

Bloodhound ignored the question. “Are you packed for the trip?”

“What trip?” Ajay asked, frowning up at them. “You guys got a mission or something?”

“Uh, I didn’t know I needed to pack,” Elliott said, because it was true. “I thought it was going to be a one day thing.”

“It will be, if we are lucky,” Bloodhound said, and they let out an annoyed exhale. He’d never heard them so irritated. “But luck is never quite on my side.”

“I can go pack, yeah,” Elliott said with a nervous giggle. He didn’t really want to spend more than a day in Jotunheim, but was afraid to bail on Bloodhound in case they decided his head would look good on their hat rack.

“After breakfast,” they suggested, and he let out a small sigh of relief. Sounded good to him.

Ajay and Octavio pestered the both of them for details, but Elliott didn’t say much, letting Bloodhound do all the answering (and lack thereof). He ate his French toast quietly, knowing he would probably get nauseous later if today ended up being like any other day spent in Valhalla. And if they had to climb Yggdrasil? Guaranteed he would lose the contents of his stomach, and also maybe bladder.

“Why don’t you take us with you?” Octavio was whining, drawing crudely on the table with strawberry syrup. “I’m so bored of this place. Who would have thought dying so often gets old? There’s only so many language classes I can pick up before I lose my mind.”

“How many languages do you speak?” Elliott asked, impressed.

“Five, but none of them matter! Who _cares_ if I can speak Portugeuse if I never go to Portugal?”

“We don’t need a quest,” Ajay said. She had scooted closer to Octavio after he had finished describing his night with Taejoon, though was still a fair few feet away from him. “You’d die in Midgard, and then what am I supposed to do with my afterlife? Who would be my pet project?”

"Quien? Just use Elliott, amiga."

Elliott swallowed a large portion of his toast, banging his fist to his chest. “Sorry–did you say die in Midgard?”

“You didn’t know?” She frowned. “When you die in Midgard, you die for real. Same for Jotunheim. Alfheim. Muspelheim. If you die outside of Valhalla, it’s game over.”

“Like _Wreck-It-Ralph!_ ” Octavio said unhelpfully.

“There are so many _heims,_ ” Elliott said, disbelieving. He could have died in Nidavellir the other day, turned into a puddle of goo on the ground, been eaten by a trashcan and he’d been–he’d been fine with that idea. Well, not _fine_ , but he had thought he would _live,_ that he would just wake up in his Valhalla hotel room, fresh and whole again. He didn’t realize he could _actually_ die.

Deciding that thinking about it any longer would make him fall into a downwards spiral, Elliott finished the rest of his orange juice and got to his feet, heading out the door.

“Leaving already?” Ajay called.

“Yep, just gotta pack my–” he turned his head and managed to stop abruptly before running straight into Wraith. “–stuff.”

She looked terrible, the most terrible he’d ever seen her, and he’d seen her in some pretty bad states. The black eye from yesterday had faded to a barely-noticeable purple imprint, but there were new wounds on her face. Her nose was broken, and it looked like her piercing had been ripped out of her face. Her lips were split, and judging by the way he could tell she was running her tongue through her mouth, she had probably lost a couple of teeth. Her hair was lank and shiny with grease. She had also definitely smelled better four days ago.

Before he could ask her _Did you run into Ratatouille_ or _Jesus Christ do you need a hospital,_ she asked,

“Where are you going?”

“Uh,” Elliott said, glancing behind him to see if Bloodhound was staring at him. They weren’t. “That’s classified?”

“Are you leaving?” She asked, eyes narrowing, and he had been right, a few of her molars were missing.

“Yeah,” he said, deciding he could tell her that much. “‘Hound and I are going somewhere.”

She stared at him, eyes pale, paler than usual, almost. Most of the blood on her face was dry, but every time she spoke a new trickle of it ran down her chin. “You can’t.”

Elliott frowned. “Why not?”

Wraith stepped closer to him, and even though she had to crane her neck up to look at him, he felt intimidated and worried at the same time. Just what had happened to her?

“You can’t leave,” she said, and when he went to glance at the others to see if they were watching she grabbed him roughly by his shoulder. “I forbid you from leaving. There’s too many factors at play, Witt, and it’s not safe for you to leave. You need to stay, for your sake and everyone else’s.”

“What are you talking about?” He asked, trying to move her hand away from him, but her grip was vice-like. “Seriously, are you okay?”

_For my sake and everyone else’s?_

“I’m so close,” she mumbled, not quite having heard him. The other conversations in the lounge seemed to have taken a pause. “I don’t need you ruining everything for me. You are staying, and that’s that.”

“What’s this about?” Bloodhound’s voice carried over, and Wraith took a hasty step away from Elliott, her wide eyes focusing on the hunter, like she had forgotten there were other people in the room. “Are you injured?”

“You can’t leave,” Wraith repeated, and Elliott wondered if she was delirious right now, if the blood loss she had clearly suffered was making her act out. The black eye from yesterday, and gash on her stomach from weeks ago...what had she been up to recently that left her in this state?

(“I’m so close,” he remembered her saying, weeks ago, lying on his bed limply. “I’m almost there.”)

“We are,” Bloodhound said calmly, seemingly not alarmed by Wraith’s bloodied appearance. “Just for a few-”

“No!” Wraith yelled out, and the next thing Elliott knew her kunai was pointed right at his face. “Get back to your room, _now!_ ”

“Whoa!” Octavio said, he and Ajay approaching, both with matching expressions of concern. “Guys, what’s going on?”

“You’re getting a new hallmate today,” Wraith said, pointing her kunai at each of them in turn. Her fingernails were caked in dried blood, and when she swivelled her arm to point her kunai at Ajay she stumbled a little where she stood. “You all need to go back to your rooms.”

“You need a doctor,” Ajay said, her eyebrows drawn together in clear worry. “Wraith, please let me-”

“We’re leaving no matter what you say. We have important matters to attend to,” Bloodhound said clearly, and pushed past Wraith, their bird fluttering after them. Elliott made a move to follow, biting his lip in guilt, but she stuck her foot out and tripped him, sending him to the floor with a yelp. Fuck, that hurt. Gripping his shoulder, he looked back at his Valkyrie who loomed over him, tired and terrible and in pain.

“I don’t think so, son of Loki,” Wraith hissed, and he flinched, because he’d never heard her refer to him like that. “Everything I’ve done, all the work I’ve put into making sure you all get into Valhalla, the things I did, I’m not having you ruin everything by going off to free your dad! You’re the one factor I _can’t_ account for!”

“I’m not gonna free him!” Elliott said, bewildered and crawling backwards, away from her swinging kunai. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Really?”

“I don’t know who to trust!” She almost accidentally stabbed Octavio, who was standing unnaturally still, frozen in shock. Some of the other einherjar were filming the whole scene on their phones, laughing at Wraith’s breakdown. Elliott wished he could find this situation half as funny as they did. “Odin said one of you–”

“Just a second,” Ajay said, and Elliott looked over at her to see that she was standing, back straight, fists clenched. He’d seen her look annoyed before, exasperated, worried, amused–Ajay had many expressions, but this was the first time he’d ever seen her look so angry. Truly angry. “Did you get us into Valhalla _on purpose?_ ”

 _Isn’t that the point of being a Valkyrie?_ Elliott wanted to ask, but Octavio spoke up too. He wasn’t angry like Ajay yet–he mostly looked confused, but his eyes were narrowed. 

“Hang on–are you saying she planted the bomb?” He asked, and Wraith faltered, her hand lowering just a little bit before righting itself. Her eyes were flicking back and forth between the two of them, as if she didn’t know who to address first.

“They never found out who did it,” Ajay mumbled, as if putting the pieces together in her head. Elliott got to his feet slowly, bewildered, but not out of confusion anymore. He was hoping they were wrong, hoping they weren’t about to go down the track he thought they were, because that would mean...

“We were moving from one of the most secure facilities in North America,” Octavio continued her train of thought, head cocked to the side. He seemed to be drawing his thoughts out in his head, and like Elliott, his expression showed that he didn’t want to be right, either. “My parents’ company. We have some of the best security in the world, but they didn’t see anything on the cameras. There were no break-ins, and we didn’t stop anywhere.”

“You’d have to be invisible to have gotten in there,” Ajay said, and both she and Octavio’s eyes flickered to Wraith’s green scarf, which was somehow completely absent of blood.

“You don’t–that was–” Wraith’s eyes were almost pure white, irises nearly indiscernible from her sclera, but despite this he could still tell when her gaze shifted to him. “I didn’t...”

He swallowed heavily, trying not to panic, but his breath was quickening and his heart felt about ready to burst out of his chest. “Did you send that wolf down that alleyway?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” Wraith said, more blood trickling past her lips, and she disappeared. Not through a portal, like she usually did, but faded into a streak of blue. Elliott let his mouth hang open in shock, still not quite sure what had just happened. The rest of the einherjar had returned to their meals, apparently bored, but he looked over at the other two, balking a little at their matching expressions of anger.

“I didn’t _want_ to die,” Octavio mumbled, speaking through grit teeth. He was looking down at his metal feet, scuffing the floor. “I know I act like I did, but I really didn’t. She killed all of us for her stupid _memories._ ”

“I was gonna be a doctor,” Ajay said, and she sounded near tears. “I was gonna do some _good_ in the world.”

They both pushed past Elliott, like they thought this was his fault too, even though he might have been as much of a victim as they had been. 

Wraith was said to have brought in more einherjar in a year than most other Valkyries did in their lifetime, even if some of her picks for Valhalla had been ‘questionable’...how many of those deaths had been orchestrated by her? Was that why her picks were so ‘questionable’? Because they weren’t _meant_ for Valhalla, but she pulled enough strings to get them in on a technicality? Didn’t she say she had a voice that spoke to her about who was Valhalla-worthy? What if it was more sinister than that? What if it told her _how_ to kill them?

 _Heroic death is unintentional,_ he remembered her saying in his not-dream. Unintentional on the slain’s part, but what about the Valkyrie’s? Why would she do all this in the first place? Just to fulfill her death quota for Odin to get her memories back?

Elliott stepped into the hallway and saw that Bloodhound was leaning against the wall, arms crossed. Artur was perched on their shoulder, grooming his feathers, and letting out the occasional croak.

“Oh,” Elliott said, and they turned their head to him. “You probably heard all that.”

“I did,” they said with a small nod, voice still calm as ever.

Elliott swallowed. “Are you mad?”

“Not really. I had my suspicions, but I know I died naturally, so I feel like it is not my place to be mad. The person who killed me had hated me for a long time before she hunted me down. I doubt she would have needed Wraith’s influence to murder me.”

“Right,” Elliott murmured, storing that information away for later. Bloodhound didn’t say anything for a while, just stared at him for so long that he started to fidget beneath their scrutinizing gaze.

“Are _you_ mad?” They finally asked, and he let out a short exhale of breath.

“I don’t know yet.” And it was the truth. It wasn’t like his life had been going anywhere when he had been alive, and he probably wouldn’t have had any of these straws to grasp at when it came to his mother if he hadn’t gone to Valhalla. He never would have had his eyes opened to the possibility that he could see his brothers again. 

But all the same, having her be the direct cause of his death left a sick feeling in his stomach, and he felt like none of this was fair. If he hadn’t been meant for Valhalla, then he should have died and gone some place else where Vikings and dwarves and giants didn’t exist.

“You have all of eternity to think about it,” Bloodhound said, as if sensing his inner turmoil. “And that eternity might end in a week if we don’t leave soon.”

“You think this Uganda-Loki guy has info on Ragnarok?” Elliott asked. He wasn’t sure he could just forget about what had just happened, but focusing on the now seemed less stressful, so he was thankful for the change in topic.

“ _Utgard._ And yes, I have reasons to believe so.” Bloodhound touched his shoulder lightly before turning to lead him down the hallway. “I also never got to show you Gildr in its full potential.”

He had nearly forgotten about that in the chaos of the morning, but was more than happy to unlock his room and allow them inside. They stepped lightly, hardly making a noise on the wooden floors of his room, and he was about to ask them what exactly Gildr did when they opened the fridge and took his mirror out.

“Huh,” Elliott said. “I was wondering where I put that. I must have done it by accident.”

“You have seven half-empty water bottles in here,” Bloodhound said, slightly disapproving.

“Only the f-f-first half of a water bottle tastes good!” Curse his stutter for constantly making him sound like a dumbass.

Bloodhound sighed, before lifting the mirror and handing it over to Elliott. He glanced at the shiny runes written on the surface and tilted the mirror this way and that, trying to make it show him the WiFi password again, but nothing happened.

“I don’t get it,” he admitted. Bloodhound nudged him lightly and deposited Gildr into his other hand. Squinting at the runestone, he realized that the marking on it was the same as one of the runes on the mirror’s edge. “No way... _this_ is Arfr?”

“It’s just a guess,” Bloodhound said with a shrug, though they sounded curious. “Test it out.”

Elliott rolled the stone between his fingers, eyebrows furrowing. Right. If this was Arfr, then it was technically a part of his weapon, right? Is that why it had qualified him for Valhalla? Did that mean Wraith had known about this whole Gildr-Arfr thing this whole time but pretended she didn’t?

_Don’t think about that right now. Just figure it out._

Pressing the runestone to the mark on the mirror that matched, he waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

Elliott bit his lower lip in frustration, giving the mirror a little shake, but it didn’t respond. He could feel Bloodhound’s gaze burning into him, and held up the mirror at a different angle, trying again. When nothing happened once again, he let out a frustrated hum, a hum that quickly tapered into silence as his reflection did something weird: it winked. And then it split itself into two, so now two Elliotts were blinking back at him.

An idea struck, and Elliott lowered the mirror. The two Elliotts were gone, but that was fine. He faced the runestone in front of the mirror, so the markings were clearly reflected back, and in a flash of light, the mirror was gone. All he held was the runestone, humming, clearly pleased.

“What happened?” Bloodhound asked, and Elliott jumped a little–he had nearly forgotten they were there.

“I don’t really know,” he said. “But I have a theory.”

The air shifted a little bit like it tended to whenever Elliott created a decoy. Suddenly, another Elliott stood in the room, wielding another Gildr in sword form, unlike the rune in his own hands. Arching an eyebrow, he walked around his decoy, taking in every single detail of it. It looked exactly the same as he currently did; styled hair, a dark flannel shirt, jeans and neat shoes. The fact that it was carrying Gildr was odd, but that was where his theory would present itself.

“Fight me,” Elliott told Bloodhound, excitement tinging his voice. Bloodhound stared at him silently, before their hand moved to their waist, and they took their collapsible spear in hand, flicking it so it extended into its full length. They then jabbed it right at Elliott, who dodged just in time to avoid getting his eye stabbed out. The tip of the spear instead clashed right into the decoy-Gildr that decoy-Elliott was holding, and the real Elliott gave a grin of delight because that had _worked._

“Curious,” Bloodhound said, and he thought they almost sounded impressed. They drew their spear back and tried stabbing Elliott again, but his decoy came to his rescue once more, deflecting their weapon for him. Bloodhound changed tactics, and this time aimed directly at the decoy. His decoy moved to block their spear from stabbing its face, but it was a ruse; Bloodhound changed their direction at the very last moment, instead driving their spear into the decoy’s chest. It fizzled away, like Elliott’s decoys always did. He was kind of disappointed, but not very surprised.

“It seems your mother wanted to make you more viable in a fight,” Bloodhound mused, collapsing their spear back into its six-inch cylinder and hooking it onto their belt.

“Thanks, Mom,” Elliott mumbled, willing Gildr into blade form. He looked at his reflection in it, eyes flickering across the runes. He looked similar enough to his mother that if he pretended hard enough, he could see her smiling back at him. Bloodhound approached, reaching a hand out to touch Gildr. They traced a gloved finger on the carved hawks, letting out a low hum.

“Hawks,” they mused. “The natural predator of snakes.”

Their fingers came to a rest at his wrist, and he felt his breath hitch slightly at the contact. He hoped they hadn’t heard, because that would be embarrassing, but their mask tilted towards him a bit before they carefully retracted their hand. Ah, crap. He always did something to make a fool of himself in front of them...

“We should leave soon,” they said, backing away from him towards his door. “I will see you in half an hour.”

“Right,” Elliott said, and watched them leave. When they had closed the door, he looked back at his reflection in his blade, and asked himself, "Why do I always have to look like an idiot?”

The blade hummed, and in a flash of light, he was now holding both Gildr and Arfr in different hands. He wondered if there was some sort of time limit, or maybe the blade had sensed he was no longer in danger and had split itself from the mirror. Whatever the case, this would surely come in handy, but he wondered how his mother had managed to achieve it. He had never managed to make his decoys stay solid or wield weapons like he just did. Sure, they could imitate his weapons, but actually using them was out of the question. They would normally just disappear once they made contact with something. Had it been Natalie who enchanted them to do that, or his mom? He was sure Natalie had never seen the mirror, so maybe she had enchanted Gildr while his mother had somehow enchanted Arfr.

Deciding he could ponder over it later, Elliott grabbed a duffel bag from beneath his bed and shoved a few pairs of shirts and pants inside, hoping he wouldn’t actually need them. He still didn’t really know why he was going on this trip to Jotunheim, but if Utgard-Loki had asked for him, maybe he knew something about his mother, or Wraith, or this mysterious Crypto person....

Opening up his fridge, he shoved a bit of food inside too, because you should never go into different worlds without food. He had decided this after hearing the fact that dwarves evolved from maggots in his mythology class, and shuddered to think of the kind of food they would have in Nidavellir, let alone other worlds. If Jotunheim was the land of the giants, would they even have human-sized food? Like, food suitable for humans to eat, not food the size of a human.

He suddenly had a horrifying vision of an Elliott-shaped porkchop, shuddered, and shoved some of his half-drunk water bottles into his duffel. He then picked up Gildr, willed it into runestone form, and shoved it into his pocket.

Taking Arfr into his hands, he wondered what he was supposed to do with it. He didn’t want to shove it in his duffel and risk cracking the glass, but he didn’t want to slip it down his shirt like he had the other day because it had been inconvenient to take out. With a sigh, he flipped it from hand to hand, thinking hard, before wondering if it would turn into a runestone as well. Concentrating, he asked it silently to take another form. It hummed in his hands, an almost angry vibration, and he nearly dropped it in fear, but with a flash of light it turned into a long beaded necklace, with a small metal circle.

Huh.

Withdrawing Gildr from his pocket, he pressed the runestone to the metal circle, and when he took his hand away, it stuck. Now that would come in handy, and he wouldn’t feel like Gildr was about to fall out of his pocket at any moment. Looping the necklace around his neck, he dropped the stone down his shirt, where the metal circle rested coolly against his chest. He couldn’t even feel the stone, but when he looked down, the bump was noticeable.

Elliott wanted to test if his decoys would spawn with the same combination, but a weird noise to his right got his attention, and he jerked his head just in time to see a piece of paper flutter onto his bed, alongside a grubby package wrapped in brown paper. Getting to his feet, he walked over, recognizing the handwriting almost instantly. Wraith’s perfect print jumped out at him, and he lifted the paper with some trepidation, still upset by the day’s events. He didn’t know why she was writing him letters, but he wasn’t going to take an apology at the moment. He needed time to process.

_Hey._

_I can explain._

_Or maybe I can’t._

_You might need this._

_You-know-who told me it’d be a good idea._

_I’m not crazy._

_Promise._

_(P.S. You-know-who also asks that you use the women’s restroom on the third floor of Ikea.)_

It wasn’t signed, but he knew it was her. Stuffing the note into his pocket, he started unwrapping the package, but he didn’t even need to unwrap it all the way to know that it was the snowglobe she had gotten from Natalie’s store. Okay, great. Wraith’s voices told her to leave him a snowglobe for his journey to Jotunheim and to use the Ikea women’s restroom. He would have rather had an apology over this. At least an apology wouldn’t be vague.

Probably.

Deciding to stuff the snowglobe unceremoniously in his duffel, Elliott slung it over his shoulder and exited into the vast hallway of floor sixty-nine, looking left and right for a sign of Ajay and Octavio. He didn’t see them, but could hear a mishmash of loud sounds from Octavio’s room that sounded a lot like multiple video games playing at once, so he figured he was venting some frustration out that way. 

Elliott paused outside Bloodhound’s door, frowning.

“Just knock,” he told himself, and then looked left and right to make sure nobody was watching him talk to himself. “Or maybe wait. Knock and then wait? Wait then knock? Don’t knock at all?”

They said they would meet him in half an hour, but he had no idea where. Was he supposed to wait for them to come to him, or go to them? Or sit out in the hallway?

The door in front of him suddenly swung open, and he was face-to-face with Bloodhound’s mask.

“Oh,” they said, not sounding surprised at all. He wondered if they heard him talking to himself, and his face flushed. “Ready?”

“Yep,” Elliott said, not quite sure what he was getting himself into. He steeled himself anyways, deciding that hey, if this was how the rest of his afterlife was going to be spent, hopping from world to world, he might as well start early. “Uh, Wraith left me a note.”

They had been stroking Artur’s feathers, cooing a goodbye, but paused and asked, “And?”

“Uh..she wants us to use the women’s restroom in Ikea? On the third floor?”

“Interesting,” Bloodhound said. They extended their arm further away from their body, and Artur took flight back into their room. “Not the entrance I would have chosen.”

“Not the what?”

“There are many direct doorways into Midgard located in the hotel,” Bloodhound said, locking their door. They had a cute little handbag that they clipped onto their belt, which made Elliott feel stupid with his huge duffel. “As well as Jotunheim, but none of the Jotunheim entrances get close to our intended location.”

They started leading him down the hallway and he followed, trying to make a mental note of all this information. He had started compartmentalizing all the new information he received, sorted into one of three categories: _WORLDS, GODS,_ and _THINGS THAT MIGHT KILL ME._ The lists for all three things were starting to get awfully long, but he didn’t mind the info dump from Bloodhound. He could listen to their voice all day.

“There are also entrances into Yggdrasil from here, so we _could_ find the most direct route to Jotunheim, but I do not feel comfortable taking you there yet, what with Ratatoskr and all.” They both stepped into a spear-gridded elevator, sharing the space comfortably. “It will take a little longer, but if we can exit into Midgard near another entrance into Jotunheim, it would be safest. I already know of an entrance that will take us only ten miles from where we need to be.”

“Nice,” Elliott said as Bloodhound pressed the button for the Ikea floor. “Uh, but why wouldn’t you use the women’s bathroom?”

_Wow. Nice way to phrase that, Elliott. You fucking idiot. You absolute buffoon._

Thankfully Bloodhound had understood what he meant, because they kept talking, though with a lilt at the end of their voice that made Elliott feel like they were close to laughing. “It is a couple blocks away from my preferred exit into Midgard, but we shall use it if Wraith says so. From there, we will make our way to Utgard Lanes.”

Utgard Lanes...sounded dangerous, if Elliott was going to be honest with himself. He didn’t know what he was getting into, or why he was going along with it, but at some point in your einherji afterlife, there comes a time where you just decide fuck it. Everything is already so goddamn weird. Might as well go into Jotunheim while you’re at it.

That was his reasoning with himself, but there was a pit of nausea pooling in his stomach that only got worse as they entered the Ikea. Fellow einherjar ducked to avoid the pair of them, and Elliott was reminded of the fact that they were both relatively unpopular people for different reasons. They climbed the Ikea steps, Elliott trying to hide his duffel bag from view while Bloodhound kept their back straight and their head forward. They then marched over to the women’s restroom, barging in with little regard for anything else.

Elliott hesitated outside the doors, but when no screaming immediately came from inside, entered as well.

Every single stall was out of order, yellow caution tape on each door and a long-abandoned WET FLOOR sign lying sideways on the ground. Instead of a person slipping on it, like in Midgard, it had an image of a strange watery monster engulfing a group of people with swords. He didn’t really want to know why.

Bloodhound paused in front of the second stall from the left. “This is it. Mind your step.”

They then stepped inside, closed the door, and locked it.

Nothing happened.

“Was that supposed to do something?” Elliott asked, but received no response. Frowning, he bent over to peer under the stall and was surprised to see that their boots had vanished. Okay then. This would teleport him out of the bathroom. Fantastic.

The door swung open by itself, beckoning him inside, and with a heft of his bag he stepped in, barely managing to cram himself inside the tiny stall. Instantly he felt his stomach drop to the ground.

Though he could feel that both of his feet were planted firmly on the tile floor, Elliott felt that, for some reason, he was teetering on the edge. Like he was on a rollercoaster, and had just reached the highest peak before the death drop. He didn’t even want to look behind him or below him, afraid that if he moved too much, he would slip and fall down, down, down into nothingness.

With a shaky breath of panic, he turned the knob so it switched from **AVAILABLE** to **OCCUPIED** , and felt himself fall through the air, only to land solidly in the middle of a parking lot.

Bloodhound was beside him, arms crossed. “Find your way safely?”

“I think I’m gonna throw up,” Elliott said, and then he did.

“It’s alright,” Bloodhound said, patting him on the back as he emptied his breakfast into the nearest bush. “Jumping through doorways like that takes some getting used to.”

“I think I’ll be fine,” Elliott coughed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, though his stomach violently disagreed with him. “Uh, where are we?”

“South Bay Center,” Bloodhound responded. “Dorchester.”

“Fucking Boston,” he murmured to himself in disgust.

The mortals around them took no note of their sudden appearance or vomiting, too busy bustling about, minding their business and doing their shopping. They were in the parking lot in front of a Best Buy, in the middle of the day, though the sky was a solid gray and the air was frigid. Glad that he had packed a coat in his duffel, Elliott unzipped it and had managed to yank a sleeve out when Bloodhound asked,

“Do you smell smoke?”

Elliott blinked, glancing up and looking around for any sign of something on fire. There was a TJ-Maxx across from them right next to a Panera Bread, and there was a group of people making their way between the shops. Nobody seemed to be in a state of panic over a fire, so he shrugged and was about to say something when the glass doors of the Best Buy exploded into a million fragmented pieces, a column of smoke and fire erupting out in a mini explosion.

Bloodhound managed to shove Elliott to the ground, using their body to shield him from the onslaught of glass, as there was no time to run away. Elliott grit his teeth as his cheek was pressed into the gravelly road, the heat from the explosion rolling across the pair of them in waves. Jesus, it was hot. Heat had never really bothered Elliott–he could stick his finger above a candle flame and not feel it at all–but this heat was something else. It was burning, blazing, consuming, and almost otherworldly.

“I smell Muspelheim,” Bloodhound grunted above him, and he wanted to ask _What realm is Muspelheim, again?_ but his cheek was pressed harder into the ground as Bloodhound lifted themselves up a bit, trying to see what was going on.

Pedestrians screamed, those who had been putting bags inside their cars scattering, their cars soon becoming compact metal trash as some of the building collapsed onto the parking lot. Thick black smoke unfurled into the sky, ash raining down onto the ground, which Elliott accidentally inhaled and started coughing violently. A siren blared somewhere, and in the midst of it all he heard a high, girlish voice yelling,

“Ah! Je suis désolé! Not today! Come back again another time! Bye!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi !! still typing on my phone sorry ;w;
> 
> so this is actually half of the chapter i wrote because when all was said and done, the chapter ended up being like , a monstrous 15,000 words. 
> 
> so good news: i will post the next chapter on friday or saturday ! bad news: it will probably be a little shorter than the other chapters!! sorry!!!
> 
> have a nice day!!! thank u for all the wonderful comments !!!!! 
> 
> tl:  
> quien: who?  
> je suis désolé: im sorry


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for a bit of blood and injury this chapter!

Elliott had only been to Nidavellir once, and had talked to the girl for about ten minutes, but the French accent was distinct, and he managed to lift his head from the ground despite Bloodhound’s palm being pressed firmly against the back of his skull. “ _Natalie?_ ”

She was running from the smoking wreckage of the Best Buy, clutching a large laptop to her chest. She wore a large, puffy jacket over a baggy jumpsuit, which was thankfully free of grease and scorch marks, unlike her other outfit, and her choppy blonde bob was sticking up in different directions due to the forceful winds of the explosion.

Natalie seemed to notice him, but stumbled a little over melted asphalt, barely managing to regain her footing just in time to avoid a large fireball landing exactly where she had once been standing.

Elliott then looked in the direction the fireball had come from, seeing a tall, towering man standing so high that the clouds formed wreaths around his billboard-sized head. His skin was solid and rocky with fiery red veins running all over his body, resembling lava on a volcanic surface. His pitch-black eyes were pools of obsidian. When he opened his mouth to speak, a wave of hot, stinky bad breath that smelled a lot like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos washed over the three of them:

“Natalie Paquette! Unhand that computer, now!”

“Sorry! I can’t! I hope you understand!” Natalie yelled, running right past Elliott and Bloodhound without another glance. “Have a good day!”

“Should we help her?” Elliott asked, but his stomach protested that idea violently. 

“It would be dishonorable not to,” Bloodhound replied, and the next thing he knew, they were aiming with their thumb before throwing their spear a good hundred meters. Elliott admired their strong, perfect posture, and the high arc the spear had been thrown, speaking to the hunter’s power and precise aim.

The spear had been targeted at the giant’s neck, but he turned so the spear tip instead pierced right through his ear, and it stayed there uselessly, now looking like nothing more than a dangling earring.

There was a pause.

“Fuck,” Bloodhound said.

“FUCK!” The giant roared back. “Einherjar! This is none of your business! Go back to Valhalla!”

He took a step forward, crushing a cluster of expensive sports cars beneath his volcanic foot, and Elliott stumbled backwards as the force sent a small shockwave through the parking lot. It seemed the mortals had gotten the memo that something weird was happening, even if they couldn’t actually see the giant, because they were all clustered outside the Panera Bread across the street and filming them on their phones. Elliott didn’t want to know how soon this would end up on YouTube.

“What do we do?” He called, watching Bloodhound dodge fireball after fireball, the giant angry enough about his new piercing that he had paused in his chase of Natalie to attack them.

“Distract him, please!” They yelled back, before executing a perfect combat roll to avoid a chunk of flame.

Distractions. Okay. He could do distractions! Being an attention whore was kind of his thing. He loved attention! He especially loved being attention when it involved also being a distraction. Right. He could do this.

Elliott sent out three decoys with Gildr in their hands (which was a _relief_ because he didn’t know if he’d need to do the whole mirror thing to do that again), all yelling battle cries and charging at the giant’s smoking feet. Meanwhile, he ducked for cover behind an upturned semi-truck and looked for any sign of Natalie. He spotted a bob of blonde hair crouched in front of a pair of garbage cans, and raced towards her, seeing that she was busy shoving her laptop into her bag.

“What’s going on?” Elliott asked, sliding to a stop beside her on his knees.

“Ah, well, I’m not sure,” she mumbled, slinging her bag over her shoulder before covering her ears with her hands. “I was having my computer looked at when he came in and demanded that I hand it over, and now he is attacking innocent Midgardians! Will your friend be okay?”

“Should be,” Elliott said, but peeked over the garbage cans just to make sure. Bloodhound had somehow managed to climb up the giant’s arm and was now crawling their way up to where their spear was dangling from his ear, while Elliott’s decoys stabbed at his ankles. The giant was jangling one foot around, trying to shake one of Elliott’s decoys off his big toe. All in all, it looked like they had it handled, but the decoys would fizzle away once they were hit with a force strong enough to disrupt the illusion.

“Oh dear,” Natalie mumbled, having peeked out with him. “I think he destroyed the entrance into Nidavellir. It was quite convenient for me.”

“There was an entrance into Nidavellir in this Best Buy?” Elliott asked, astounded.

“Oui,” she nodded. “The video games section. There are a bunch of Wii-U’s on clearance. It’s there.”

Before he could ask one of his _many_ questions, a large, solid object crashed into the wall behind the two of them before falling to the ground with an audible _THUMP._ Elliott let out a (very manly) high-pitched scream that petered out when he realized it was Bloodhound, lying in a crumpled heap on the pavement. He raced over to help them, but they managed to push themself to their knees before he got there, albeit shakily.

“You okay?” Elliott asked, kneeling by their side and hesitantly placing a hand on their shoulder, mimicking the same gesture of comfort and assurance they often gave him.

“Yes,” they responded, voice sounding gravelly even through their filter, and they waved their collapsible spear around in one hand. “Got it back.”

Elliott helped them to their feet while Natalie pulled a little first aid kit from her bag, which. He had no idea how that and her laptop fit in there, but there was no time to ask about the specifics of its dimensions–the giant was still tossing fireballs into the air, even if he had lost sight of his crunchy einherjar and dwarf snacks.

“Here, let me help!” Natalie said, but she was waved away by Bloodhound.

“We need to get out of here,” they said through a cough. “He is only attacking because we are here, and he can smell us. Giants love to attack einherjar. If we leave, he will go back to Muspelheim.”

“You sure he won’t just follow us into Jotunheim?” Elliott asked desperately. He knew there was a difference between fire giants and jotun, frost giants, but he didn’t know if that would prevent the lava dude from making his way into the frosty realm of Jotunheim.

The corner of a building beside them exploded as another fireball hit it, and a chunk of concrete hit the corner of Bloodhound’s mask, though they seemed unfazed.

“Most Midgardian entrances are too small for giants, even when they shapeshift into smaller forms,” they said. “The giant probably came through a special entrance far away from here just to hunt her down. Miss Paquette, would you like to follow us?”

“Into Jotunheim?” She inquired with pursed lips. “Is that the nearest escape from here?”

“I believe so.”

“Then so be it!” She got to her feet and started jogging, running in a funny way due to her bag and clunky sneakers. Elliott looked at Bloodhound, who was shifting all their weight onto their left leg and looking particularly battered, which he supposed getting thrown at a building could do to you.

“Are you okay?” He asked, worried. Now that he knew they could die and get injured when they weren’t in Valhalla, he didn’t know how they were going to make it out of here all in one piece. If they were hurt so badly, would they be able to heal back in Valhalla? Was there such thing as permanent damage? He’d heard about injuries that went untreated for too long and the bone didn’t set right–was that possible even with the Valhalla system of rebirth?

“Don’t fret,” Bloodhound said, and he swore he heard a smile in their voice. “Even when injured, einherjar are faster than normal mortals.”

They broke into a jog as well, following Natalie down the street. They did seem to run pretty fast, even if there was an obvious jolt throughout their body every time their right foot touched the ground, and Elliott felt relief as he watched them turn a corner without getting seen by the giant. He was still worried about their injuries, especially because their body was so covered that he couldn’t see where all their wounds were, but he supposed he could interrogate them about their injuries later.

He made to follow Bloodhound, but had to skid to a halt when the road in front of him crumpled beneath the force of a large gob of molten-lava spit.

“Get back here, little demigod! I can smell you! I haven’t eaten a son of Loki in so long!” The giant yelled, and picked up a car. An Alfa Romeo. Oh, someone was _not_ gonna be happy about that. Elliott was especially not going to be happy, because the car was rocketing towards him, about to crush him into a mess of bones and guts and perfect hair.

Elliott managed to jump over the crater in the road right as the car smashed to the ground behind him, a jump impossibly high that he never could have achieved in his mortal life. One of the car’s tires managed to bounce right over his head and break through a second-story shop window–the glass shattered, raining down on his head as he raised his arms up to cover his face from the spray. He had no time to raise his duffel to shield himself, and received the full brunt of the glass shower. He gave a wince when a shard pierced his forearm, a foot long and spurting blood all over the brick walls.

Elliott had learned through his training with Bloodhound that einherjar could run faster, jump higher, and handle more pain that normal Midgardians could. He was sure that had he not been a dead warrior, he would be on his knees, curled up in a ball right now, and probably crying from the pain. He was an einherji, however, and einherjar were a lot tougher than that.

That being said, he _was_ in a lot of pain, and there was a _lot_ of blood everywhere.

Elliott turned the corner and saw Bloodhound and Natalie peeking their heads out from an alleyway, and when they saw him, beckoned him closer. Elliott sent a decoy in one direction before making his way towards them, trying to staunch the flow of blood as best he could, but it had soaked through his shirt now, drenching his sleeve. 

“What did you do?” Bloodhound mumbled, so quiet he wasn’t sure he was meant to hear it as they placed their hand gently on his shoulder and steered him down the alley.

“My best,” Elliott replied honestly.

The ground shook as the giant looked for them, stepping over buildings and breaking powerlines as he went. A commercial airplane above them was rapidly changing course to avoid the giant’s head, and Elliott was worried he would swat it out of the sky, but he ignored it in favor of the juicier einherjar prey lurking somewhere below him.

“In here!” Natalie called, and they grouped around a long-abandoned, rusted Pontiac Aztek, its hood opened up and displaying its gutted insides. Natalie climbed carefully inside, and reality seemed to warp as she did so, and the next thing he knew, she was gone.

“You’re sure he can’t follow us?” Elliott asked as Bloodhound shoved him towards the car.

“I’m sure,” Bloodhound said. A burst of heat blazed at the end of the alleyway–the giant had finally spotted the two of them. Bloodhound then grabbed Elliott by his shoulders and shoved him face-first into the hood of the car, kicking his legs up to follow the rest of his body.

The next thing he knew, he was coughing around a mouthful of snow, which was already colored crimson with his own blood. Groaning in pain, Elliott rolled out of the way as Bloodhound fell onto the ground beside him, but they quickly scrambled to their feet, shouting, “We need to shield ourselves before others find us!”

“I have a taser in case anything happens!” Natalie said back, still rather collected despite the current situation.

Bloodhound pulled Elliott to his feet, somehow both gentle and rough at the same time, tipping his chin towards them gently and speaking in soft words: “Elliott, I need you to hide us. Please.”

“What,” he mumbled, because they were not making much sense. God, he felt so woozy. And cold. Very cold.

“I know you are hurting,” Bloodhound said, and moved to grab his non-injured hands in theirs. “But your magic. I need you to make us invisible.”

“Oh no,” he heard Natalie gasp. It sounded like she was rustling through her bag. “Oh no, I forgot to bring some with me!”

Bloodhound and Natalie’s voices suddenly sounded so far away, muffled and fuzzy as he blinked his blurry eyes. He could hardly see his surroundings, and his head felt like it had been filled with cotton. With a cough, he put both his hands palm-down on the ground and tried to focus, but nothing came to him. He felt weak, and in so much pain.

God, why did he even agree to go on this trip...they had been in Midgard for two minutes before everything went to shit, Bloodhound getting thrown into a building and his arm being torn by glass...now he was cold, so cold that he could hardly sit still, shaking so bad in the frosty air of Jotunheim that he felt like he was about to become a Loki popsicle within minutes.

He was going to give up, just succumb to the fuzziness in his head and lie down and sleep, when a howl cut through his thoughts solidly like a knife. His breath returned to him in quickened gasps as he recalled that night months ago, mauled and dismembered, and that night from years ago, heat consuming their family home in a great arc of fire against the polluted New York sky.

“–I don’t have any on me,” Natalie was saying, sad, her voice grating against Elliott’s hurting head. “If I had one, we would all be safe.”

“I can defend us, but I would need you to carry Elliott,” Bloodhound said back. He heard the metallic _shing_ of them lengthening their spear, which sent another shiver through his body. “I hear them approaching.”

Elliott was in pain, too much pain, but he imagined the wolves tearing his friends apart while he bled out uselessly in the snow, and clenched his teeth hard, biting his tongue.

 _Not today,_ Elliott thought to himself, and bent reality.

The sky above him pinched slightly, wax-like, before smoothing itself out. The frigid air changed slightly too–noticeable only to Elliott, who was the one setting up the illusion, taking inspiration from the frozen trees and icicles around him, layering those details over the group’s presence. 

Bloodhound swiveled their head around, confused, before mumbling, “They’ve stopped approaching.”

“I don’t know how long I can keep this up,” Elliott groaned, and gave a cough that sent a stab of pain throughout his whole body. “Uh, if I bleed out, I’m gonna haunt you, ‘Hound.”

“You are not bleeding out,” they said, slightly alarmed. “I will treat you. Let me go take care of those wolves.”

“I’m sorry for not being much help,” Natalie said, moving to kneel beside Elliott. She had her first aid kit in her hands. “Normally I carry snowglobes with me, but–”

“I’ve got one!” Elliott half-shouted excitedly, cutting her off, but immediately regretted it when he started coughing again. “In–in my bag–”

Natalie dug around his duffel, which had thankfully survived this whole ordeal unscathed, and withdrew the shining snowglobe Wraith had left him. She then threw it to the ground without much warning, so hard that it shattered even against the powdery snow and made him flinch at the sound. A campfire sprouted from the ground, along with a two-man tent, and the air around them turned solid, before crystalizing into a globe. 

They were now all effectively inside the snowglobe, as bizarre as it sounded, but honestly, after three or so months in Valhalla, sure. Snowglobes could do that. Why not.

“You can stop now!” Natalie gestured to him, and Elliott slumped onto the ground with another groan, feeling like a large weight had been lifted off his shoulders. His muscles relaxed, which was a bit alarming due to the amount of blood he was losing, but Bloodhound quickly returned to his side, rolling him over onto his back and lifting his injured arm carefully. 

“Feel free to use my first-aid kit. I am not that good at stitches, but I have thread and a needle in there,” Natalie said, sliding them her kit.

“Thank you,” Bloodhound said, tipping their head towards her, before gathering gauze up in their free hand, along with a small container of hydrogen peroxide. 

Elliott must have passed out, because the next thing he knew, his cleaned wound was halfway through being stitched up, and he did his best to sit still, despite how uncomfortable it was to watch the needle poke through his skin. He gave a tiny jolt when Bloodhound tugged a bit, and they instantly froze, before speaking gently.

“I am sorry for pushing you earlier," they apologized, before bending their head back down over their work. "To do your magic. Your blood smells very strong, so I was afraid that you would attract unwanted company."

"'Sokay," Elliott murmured a little hazily. "Giants have good noses, huh?"

"Indeed. It even inspired that tale about the beanstalk– _fee, fie, foe, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman_."

"That's terrifying."

"Is it?" Bloodhound hummed, sounding like they were smiling, though their good cheer quickly faded away as they continued tending Elliott's wound. "...It is my fault this happened to you.”

“Don’t be like that,” Elliott said, even though half of him wanted to get mad at somebody for his injured arm. If there was anybody to get mad at, he told himself, it was the fire giant. “You had a good reason to take us there. You didn’t know there’d be a lava dude hiding inside that Best Buy waiting to kill us.”

“I could have protected you better,” Bloodhound argued, stubborn, though their posture was relaxed as they continued patching him up.

“Hey, you got hurt yourself. You rushed ahead so you wouldn’t slow me down. I should have protected _you_.” Elliott winced a little, thinking about all the times he could have sent another decoy to Bloodhound’s aid. “It’s my fault too.”

“This whole journey is essentially my fault.” Bloodhound finished up the stitches before unraveling the roll of gauze, movements precise and practiced. “I dragged you out without giving you much info, expecting you to just follow me without explanation, and in doing so, I’ve endangered you.”

“Aren’t I constantly in danger anyways?” Elliott joked.

He couldn’t see their expression, but could tell they weren’t impressed. They started dressing his wound before changing topics.

“I am impressed you managed to conceal us. Have you ever tried that before?”

“No,” Elliott admitted. “Whenever I need to hide, I usually just shapeshift.”

“Into a meerkat?”

Elliott smiled against his will, embarrassed. “Yup.”

He then noticed something odd about the material of their clothing, something he hadn’t managed to make out before, what with being dizzy and losing a lot of blood. There were black scorch marks all up and down their back, the cloth smoking in some places. He could see the other layer they were wearing beneath their heavy outside clothes, and swore he even saw the shiny skin of a burn.

“Hey...Did you get hit by the fire giant?”

They finished tending to him without answering him and got to their feet carefully, but despite their slow movements, he could tell it was paining them to move. “Do you need any-?”

“No,” they said sharply, cutting him off, and then softened their tone when they noticed the look on his face. “I will tend to my wounds in the tent and then sleep. I think rest is what I need.”

“Right...well, uh, let me know if you need something?” He said, feeling pathetic and useless.

“I will,” they said, but he had a feeling they wouldn’t. They ducked inside the tent, zipping it shut behind them, and he sighed, wandering over to sit beside Natalie, who was warming herself by the fire. She silently handed him a water bottle and some jerky from his duffel, and he accepted it with a quiet thanks.

Elliott drank the water bottle in three gulps, setting aside the empty plastic with an audible gasp for air before moving onto the jerky. Nearly bleeding to death made him one hungry man. He wondered if he should be concerned by the amount of blood he lost, but he felt fine. 

Maybe einherjar could bleed longer.

It was weird inside the snowglobe: they were clearly sitting in piles of snow, but when he touched it, it didn’t seem cold at all, and felt rather soft. He wasn’t cold, though his brain told him he should be, but he wasn’t too hot either despite sitting right in front of a campfire. Wind blew through his hair, but he felt none of it, and he didn’t know how there was wind in here despite the solid crystal around them, but he supposed none of that mattered. The good thing is, they were all safe.

Elliott glanced over at Natalie, who was staring at the fire, unblinking. Her bag rested in her lap, the corner of her computer peeking out and glinting silver.

“Why did that giant guy want it?” Elliott asked, pointing at it, and Natalie looked down, tucking the laptop more securely into her bag.

“I can only guess,” she said with a light shrug. “This is not the first time I have been attacked. This is the computer my papa and I uploaded all our blueprints onto, so I suppose it is valuable information for someone to have. Dangerous, too.”

“Oh yeah, didn’t you guys build the Valhalla security system or something like that?”

Natalie smiled towards him, though not necessarily at him. “Asgard, too.”

Elliott let out a low whistle. “Security for the gods? You must be _good_ at security.”

“Merci...as well as security for Loki’s cave and Lyngvi, the island of Fenrir Wolf.”

Elliott smiled back at her, but something was nagging at the back of his mind, brought up by the mention of Loki.

Natalie knew Wraith better than he did. Probably. They at least knew each other without the context of Valkyrie and einherji in the way, so it was plausible that Wraith would tell Natalie things she wouldn’t tell any of her hall sixty-nine picks. What if Natalie knew why Wraith did all that? Coordinated that wolf attack against him and the other demigod that night? Planted that bomb in the bus Ajay and Octavio were riding? 

...What if Natalie had _helped?_

 _God you’re being paranoid,_ a voice that sounded an awful lot like Chris said in his head. _Just ask her, dumbass._

“Are you okay?” Natalie asked, concerned, and her electric blue eyes met his for the first time. Elliott took a deep breath before spilling everything that had happened this morning, including all the times Wraith had stumbled into his room or through the hallways injured and exhausted these past few weeks.

When he finished, Natalie had turned her body towards him, knees drawn up to her chest and bag set aside safely. She nodded along every couple of words, though her eyes were fixed at a point over his shoulder, somewhat glazed over, though they quickly watered when he got his last sentence out.

“Oh, that Valkyrie,” Natalie mumbled quietly, wiping the tears from her eyes, a reaction he hadn’t quite been expecting. “She’s doing so much. She’s going to kill herself.”

“Yeah, but _why?_ ” Elliott pressed, because he had hoped to gain some answers from her. “Why would she do all that? Why would she kill us like that? For some stupid Valhalla credibility?”

“Non!” Natalie exclaimed, though she quieted her voice down as she continued speaking. “Non, non, you must understand. I’m sorry, Mr. Witt, I truly am, for the loss of your life. But you have to understand that Wraith has _nothing._ She has no memories, no life, no family. When we met, a year ago, she wasn’t even a Valkyrie yet. She was lost. She had gotten into Nidavellir somehow, and had no idea why.”

Elliott listened to her with a furrowed brow, trying to picture it. He knew Wraith was definitely older than him, but he had always felt that she had been a Valkyrie for decades. She seemed so knowledgeable and world-weary, the type that came with having done something for a long while, but to hear that she hadn’t been a Valkyrie for even a year was a surprise.

“Odin found her eventually, and promised her that if she could curate enough einherjar and stop Ragnarok, she would learn who she is.” Natalie wiped even more tears from her face, lips drawn tightly in a line. “I try not to speak ill of the gods, but he is cruel. He gave her an impossible task, and now she is desperate to complete it. It’s going to drive her insane.”

“So Odin’s encouraging her to kill people?”

“Odin is not encouraging her to do _anything_ ,” Natalie said back. “How many times have you seen Odin in Valhalla?”

Elliott frowned, remembering his every night in the Feast Hall of the Slain–the thanes table, Helgi calling for the presence of the Allfather, but receiving no reaction, no message. How nobody seemed to know what Odin wanted, or what he told his own Valkyries.

Odin was a right bastard, Elliott thought to himself, hugging his knees close to his body in a way similar to Natalie. He tried to imagine it: no memories, no name, no family, wandering the streets of some other world, and being told that if he did this thing, he could have it all back. He would probably do everything in his power to do it, but would he go as far as plan the death of all people? 

And then to have that person vanish suddenly, not answering when being called upon, leaving him to pursue his goal with desperate measures, implemented without interference from the Allfather himself?

He sympathized with Wraith, he really did, but this was where his pity hit a roadblock: did it excuse her leading those wolves to the alleyway where he would die? Did it excuse her planting that bomb that would kill Ajay and Octavio in the oncoming explosion? And what was she doing now that left her so exhausted every day? Trying to find _another_ Valhalla hopeful to kill?

(“You’re getting a new hallmate,” he recalled her saying this morning.

He shuddered at the thought, and wondered if Ajay and Octavio would tell this new hallmate that their death had likely been brought upon them by their Valkyrie.)

“I am not asking you to forgive her. That is up to you. It is your life she took, after all.” Natalie said, breaking him away from his thoughts, and got to her feet, brushing snow from her pants before giving him a hesitant smile. “But she is kind. I promise. Kinder than she wants to admit.”

Elliott hummed, tipping his chin up to look at Natalie, and said the only thing that came to mind: “You two would be cute together.”

Her face turned bright red, the pink scar looking white against her flushed skin. “Ah–merci. But I don’t think we’ll get together. She’s too focused on her memories.”

“Maybe I’ll stop Ragnarok if it means you two can date,” Elliott joked, and Natalie let out a short laugh. 

“If we are talking about cute couples, then...” Natalie’s smile turned sweet. “You and Bloodhound are very complementary of each other.”

Elliott felt his brain short-circuit, eyes going wide and jaw dropping. 

Did she.

Did she think that they were...

“You’ve got it all backwards,” Elliott stammered, face now a matching red with hers. “It’s n-n-not like that at all, we’re just friends, I don’t even th-think they like me all that much, like as a person, I think they think of m-me as a pet, actually they like their pet bird more than they like me I think, I mean I know I’m a great pe...pea...person, but I’m not for everyone, yanno? And–”

“I apologize,” Natalie said.

“Thank you,” he said back. He tried to change the subject, gesturing towards her, though his face still felt hot. “Where you uh, goin’?”

“I think I sense an entrance into Yggdrasil around here,” Natalie said, walking up to the wall of crystal before them and pressing her palm against it–her palm went through easily, like it was made from jello. “From there I will be able to head home. I just needed a moment to rest, is all.”

Elliott raised his eyebrows, a bit worried. “You sure?”

“I will be fine! I am rather friendly with Ratatoskr.”

_Ratatouille. That bastard._

“Alright. Well, uh, be safe.”

Natalie smiled at him before walking backwards through the crystal, disappearing through it. He couldn’t see her through the opaque surface, and wondered if that could lead to trouble if they wouldn’t be able to see someone approaching them. Deciding that if people couldn’t see them either it wouldn’t be much of a problem, Elliott shifted position so his head was resting against his duffel, and fell asleep in the snow.

* * *

He was having a flashback, or a memory, or a hallucination or _something_. He stood in a cavern, watching two separate horrifying scenes unfold at once:

To his left, a girl about sixteen was crumpled on the floor, screaming in pain. Her shiny black hair was pulled back with butterfly hairclips. She was wearing a shapeless, honeycomb-patterned dress, white knee-high socks, and Mary Janes. The twin snakes forming an _S_ that Loki had imprinted on Elliott's body so many years ago could be seen clearly on the back of her neck. 

Standing above her was a man with feathery dirty-blonde hair and a handsome face with scars splashed across his nose, wearing a suit jacket, Red Sox jersey, and bell-bottom jeans.

Elliott felt like he was watching a 60s horror movie as the man clenched his fist, and as he did so, the girl shrieked in pain even more, curling up into a ball and yelling incoherently. He recognized the man as Loki, but the girl was unfamiliar.

To his right, a man who looked very similar to Loki was chained to a giant slab of rock. His hair had gone white from years of toxin exposure. His face had a melted quality to it, like wax, and his body was stick-thin. You could count every single one of his ribs if you dared to get close enough, but Elliott felt that if he took even one step towards the restrained man, he would disintegrate.

A shrouded woman knelt by the man’s side, holding a bowl over his head. Above them both, a large snake hung with its mouth wide open, dripping venom down into the bowl. When the bowl reached fullness, the woman would turn to splash the contents into a bubbling pool of even more venom beside her, but the snake was relentless, and in those few moments alone, more toxin pooled onto the man’s face, who gave a shriek of agony that quickly turned into an angry shout.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING, WOMAN?” He screeched, his yelling intermingling with the girl’s. “PUT THE BOWL BACK! PUT IT BACK!”

She obliged silently, holding the bowl back up to catch more venom. Elliott caught a look at her face–emancipated, leathery white, with bloodred tears running down it silently.

He knew she must be Sigyn, and that the man tied to the rock was also Loki. There were two different Lokis in one room, and both were equally as horrible.

Elliott knew his father was imprisoned forever, and that he sent out illusions of himself similar to the way Elliott sent out his decoys. He knew that while Loki was his father, he didn’t TECHNICALLY contribute to Elliott’s birth, since his real, _actual_ body was here in this cave, withering away but never dying. But he still got a weird feeling looking at the two different Lokis, and wondered if this was how others felt while looking at him and his bamboozles. He focused his attention on the Loki to the left, because that one was, at present, more threatening.

“Do what I created you to do, and we wouldn’t need to go through all this, Nancy,” Left Loki was saying, waving his hand around lazily as the girl, Nancy, squirmed on the ground. “It’s real simple. Find the Skofnung Sword and its whetstone, and bring it to me.”

“You know I can’t!” Nancy shrieked through her tears, and her high-pitched gasps of pain once again mingled with Right Loki’s. “It can’t be drawn in the presence of women! I can’t retrieve it!”

“Aw, but you will,” Left Loki cooed, and he raised his hand higher in the air. Nancy got to her feet, though was clearly struggling and in pain, so she looked more like a puppet on strings. “All my children forget that I can control them. You’re no exception, no matter how powerful you are.”

Nancy gave Left Loki a glare with a look of clear loathing on her tear-stained face, before her eyes shifted to Right Loki, who was writhing in pain like she had not too long ago. The next thing Elliott knew, a large rhinoceros was barreling towards Right Loki, clearly intent on stomping him to death.

Left Loki stumbled out of its way with a laugh, before pointing at the rhinoceros, who gave a loud whimper of hurt before crashing to the floor and turning back into Nancy’s limp form. “Whoa-hoah, nice trick, kid. But you can’t get me. Not today. Not any day. Maybe you’ll get the chance if you get that sword for me.”

“I’d rather die,” Nancy sobbed, and turned partway into a mouse before being forced back into her human form. “I won’t start Ragnarok. I won’t. It will destroy the Nine Worlds.”

“I’m aware! But if Ragnarok happens, I don’t have to be in these chains anymore! Pity for your old man, Nance?”

Nancy spat a gob of blood at him. “Fuck you.”

“Shucks,” Left Loki sighed, sounding almost truly sorry. “Say, you’re not holding any sort of weapon, are you?”

Nancy shook her head, heaving, as Right Loki gave another screech, and Sigyn tossed more venom into the pool.

“Good,” both Lokis said at the same time. “I don’t like any of my kids making it into Valhalla.”

Elliott opened his mouth wide to scream as blood spattered the cavern walls, but no sound came out, and the next thing he knew, he was blinking his eyes awake.

Well.

Elliott was currently being roasted over a fire.

His hands and legs were tied back in an awkward angle, causing his injured arm to ache, and he was facing the cloudy Jotunheim sky. He could feel the heat of the flames at his backside, but it didn’t bother him that much. Fire never bothered him that much, and he was still a bit too disoriented from the dream to truly mind. Besides, the snowglobe protection was gone, and the fire was welcome amidst the freezing air.

He did want to know who the hell was trying to cook him, though.

Trying not to alert whoever was roasting him to the fact that he was awake, he glanced around carefully, turning his head slightly this way and that. He didn’t have to turn his head much–the two people about to eat him were giants, sitting on a log together, side-by-side. They both had long, tangled beards, animal hides plastered to their skin, and matching rows of gold teeth. The only way to tell them apart was the fact that the giant on the left had an eyepatch on his right eye with the letter X on it, and the giant on the right had an eyepatch on his left eye with the letter O on it.

Squished between the two giants was Bloodhound, whose hands were folded politely in their lap, though their shoulders were drawn up high due to the fact that they were in the middle of a jotun sandwich. Bloodhound was a very tall person, but they looked comically dwarfish next to the two giants. Elliott tried catching their eye, but it was hard to tell if he was successful, what with the mask and all.

“So glad to find some folks out here!” X was saying, chugging a large tankard of beer before letting out a loud burp that caused several birds to take flight into the air. Though Elliott could not see their expression, he could tell that Bloodhound was disgusted. “Really, what was I just saying, brother?”

“‘ _I’m hungry’,_ ” O replied. “And I said, _‘me too, brother’_!”

They both guffawed before raising their drinks together in a toast, hitting them together with so much force that some of the beer splashed out and rained down on Bloodhound. Elliott hoped that they had patched their clothes, because the thought of all that alcohol making contact with their wounds was enough to make him wince in pain.

“And lucky us, we smell a human out here! Silly human, bleeding out in Jotunheim. Don’t you know we have excellent noses?”

“Yes,” Bloodhound said, voice significantly quieter than the giants’ booming tones, and also rather dry. “Very silly human.”

“This should be a good appetizer ‘till we get to Loki’s,” O burped, patting his large stomach. Elliott noticed that he had a pig tattooed around his belly button. It gave him horrific memories of playing Overwatch by himself in his apartment. 

“Not _that_ Loki’s,” X said, as if to correct Bloodhound, but they hadn’t even said anything. “No, we’re talking about Utgard-Loki. Good friend of ours. Will be delighted to know that we rescued someone from a demigod human!”

“How do you know that I am not in cahoots with the human?” Bloodhound asked, more dryly stil. Their shoulders bunched up even more when O gave a loud laugh and slapped his knee, sloshing more of his drink onto the snow and coloring it an ugly shade of yellow.

“Of course we know you’re not in cahoots with a human!” X shouted. More birds took flight. “No good jotun would be caught dead making friendly with one, even a jotun as puny as yourself!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: this reveal is so obvious. its so obvious i dont even need to reveal it. everyone knows . everyone but elliott knows
> 
> me: [describing this chapter to jean]
> 
> jean: bloodhounds a WHAT
> 
> so its either a.) not as obvious as i thought or b.) jean's a dumbass 😔✊
> 
> thank u guys for the nice comments !!! its rly nice to recieve comments on this fic, especially because its not a 'safe' au, but incredibly niche and im trying my Best ! love u <3

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://seerofmike.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/tsodmike?lang=en)


End file.
